


Happy

by Doceo_Percepto



Series: Bendy's Murderous Adventure Across Moominvalley [7]
Category: Bendy and the Ink Machine, Mumintroll | Moomins Series - Tove Jansson
Genre: Biting, Brutal Murder, Cutting, Dissociation, Ear abuse, Eye abuse, Food Deprivation, Forced Orgasm, Gaslighting, Gore, Losing Teeth, Other, Psychological Torture, Rape, Sensory Deprivation, Sleep Deprivation, Stitches, Strangling, Vomit, Water Deprivation, a broken bone or two, physical assault, the mystery of snufkin's genitals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-17
Updated: 2018-07-04
Packaged: 2019-04-24 01:42:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 12
Words: 38,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14345316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Doceo_Percepto/pseuds/Doceo_Percepto
Summary: Bendy and the Joxter work together to capture, torture, and kill Snufkins for fun. You happen to be a Snufkin, and they find your nervous laughing very endearing. This isn't going to end well for you.





	1. Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> This follows along with the idea set in Fortuitous Alliance of the Joxter and Bendy working together. Because why have one character committing atrocious acts when you can have _two_. 
> 
> The Snufkin in this story, affectionately dubbed Happy, is Spoopy's OC, but any backstory is my invention.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please feel free to check out chapter 8, which has some drawings + info about the characters, without any spoilers. (:

All Snufkins come from Joxters and Mymbles. But Mymbles can be inattentive mothers, and have such a great many children that they really can’t be bothered with keeping track of them all. The Joxters, likewise, almost always manage to lose their Snufkins even if they’re interested in keeping them. So Snufkins might come from Joxters and Mymbles, but they are children of the wilderness. They learn from an early age how to be alone, how to hunt, to build shelters, to fish and survive.

This is what you know about other Snufkins, Joxters, and Mymbles, because this is what you have been told. You wouldn’t know from personal experience, because although you are a Snufkin, your father was one of the most attentive Joxters. The sort of Joxter that didn’t ever lose his son, the sort of Joxter that took care to protect and teach you. This, you were told, was the exception, not the rule.

Once, when you were very young, your father said, “avoid other Joxters.”

When you asked why, his expression turned frightening – frightening because he looked scared, and you could count on your hand the number of times you’d ever seen the Joxter afraid.

“Any father that abandons his children is no person to be around,” he had said, in that weird way adults have, where they say one thing, but another thing lurks dark and heavy under their words.

“Well, sure, but-“ you had started to say, and then the words all got tangled up into a faint, nervous giggle, the corners of your lips tilting up while your eyes rounded anxiously. The Joxter looked dangerous, the fire flickered shadows over his lips and his eyes were dark beneath the brim of his hat.

“Avoid other Joxters,” he repeated. It left a cold, cold feeling in your stomach, one that would have you skirting around and hiding from strange Joxters even fifteen years later.

Your own father, you decided, was plenty good enough anyway.

He preferred sleeping to playing, and eating to talking, but he showed you how to make fires, how to fish, and how to play the harmonica. He showed you which fruits were the best to pick, and at what times of the year to pick them, and he showed you how to tear up signs without getting caught. No part of him was affectionate: he was gritty and hard edges and tough love, but he always, always was there to save you.

Once, as a child, you found a little fox den with a tiny cub covered in fluffy orange fuzz.

“Fox!” you had declared delightedly, for you’d only ever seen them as adults, darting and clever in the underbrush, quite untouchable. But when you reached for the baby fox, an orange blur shot out of nowhere, and teeth sank into your hand.

While she hissed and prowled in front of her den, the Joxter grabbed your wailing self and dragged you away.

“You’d best hope you didn’t catch anything,” he’d told you crossly as he wrapped the wound in angry, jerky motions.

“All I wanted to do was pet the cub. The stupid mother just went and bit me anyway.”

The Joxter paused; you knew you’d said something very disappointing.

“You were stupid, not the mother fox. She has her cubs to look after, and to her, nothing is more important than that. You are a large, bumbling stranger, reaching out to touch the only thing she wants to protect. She acted wisely – you acted foolishly.”

Your cheeks and ears colored bright cherry red. At the time, you raged against the injustice of it all, feeling that you were right and the Joxter was wrong, and that all the world must be against you.

Later, in reflection, you realized the Joxter was like the mama fox. Protecting you. Defending you.

Another time, a few years later, you were wading into the river, patting futilely after all the minnows and their silver scales, while the Joxter drowsed on the bank. He’d told you to stay away from the middle, to not go where it was too deep, but you didn’t listen. You never listened enough, in hindsight.

The current swiped your legs out from under you; the sun splintered as water crested over your head. The harder you fought, the harder the river fought back.

You didn’t hear the Joxter jump in after you, but suddenly he was there, black-gloved hands grabbing at your shirt, and it was a chaos of swirling fabric, rushing water, thrashing limbs – he tried to drag you to the surface and twice your weight dragged him beneath it. You thought he was yelling something, but water flooded in your ears and your eyes and your mouth and you were certain you were going to die and bring him with you.

Then, you didn’t. He dragged you onto the bank, and the both of you lay there filthy with mud and water, panting and exhausted.

The Joxter didn’t speak to you for two days.

Ever since then, you feared water. And you didn’t mind so much, that the Joxter wasn’t affectionate, that he didn’t dote on you and he slept a lot. Because you knew he cared, in his own Joxterish way.

It was a year or so after that when the Joxter became inclined to take trips by himself. It started small – disappearing for several hours at a time, then a day, then more.

You knew this was part of the natural order of things, like the way a mother panther will chase her cubs from the nest once they are old enough to survive on their own. It was a compliment of sorts, that the Joxter thought you were mature and able to face the world on your own.

You knew this, and part of you rejoiced that the Joxter thought so highly of you. A much bigger part of you disagreed with the Joxter in a panicky anxious sort of way, thinking, _I’m not ready to be alone, I don’t want to be alone._

A few days at a time were fine, sure, but weeks, months? And what if one day that Joxter didn’t return?

But the Joxter said, _take life as it comes_. So you learned to, slowly. When it rained, you set up your tent and secured the rainfly. When it was sunny, you could be found out in the fields or in the trees, playing your harmonica and following the wind.

And you lived. Days melded together, drifted to nights and new mornings. The sun rose and set. Sooner or later you realized you hadn’t seen your father in months, and that you were living like any Snufkin raised by the wild. The thought was a cold, hard stone in your belly, and then you accepted it.

The next morning, you traveled away from any place you had ever been with the Joxter.

Your wanderings took you closer and closer to Moominvalley, though you did not know it – firstly because you had never heard of such a place, and secondly, you wouldn’t have cared if you had, because titles and names meant very little to you. After all, the forests and valleys were their own, and had been there before any people or any names.

Still, maybe it would have benefitted you to bother learning.


	2. Naming

Beneath you sprawls a gorgeous valley bordered on the far side by an ocean. Purple mist hangs low over the valley, gathered in pockets as if for safekeeping. A bird you’ve never heard before sings _fweee-chirchirchir chee-chirchirchir._ Morning has just broken.

This is someplace new. Someplace you have never been. It will make a good story to tell the Joxter, should you see him again (and you do expect to). He’ll be pleased to hear that you’ve traveled far from your usual haunts.

As you admire the valley from the crest of a hill, you feel a swelling sense of rightness and peace. _Take life as it comes._

You breathe in one more lungful of fresh spring air, then descend down the hill. The Joxter had told you once that water is the most important resource to find in any new place. Another time, he said that about a good napping spot, but the first bit of advice had stuck with you significantly better.

Thus, you keep one ear tuned to the trickle of water, and one ear tuned to the song of birds. The overhead view of the valley disappears as you slip into the forest, but you don’t mind, as you hope to soon be within the valley itself (and perhaps by that ocean!).

Along the way, you pass trees with unusual black sap dripping from their bark. It ignites your curiosity, as all new things do, but a single sniff of the tarry chemical scent warns you away. You also find new flowers: strange, white flowers with curly q’s extending off their petals. When you touch one, it’s delicate and soft as silk. There are a lot of new experiences to be had here.

Some minutes later, the trees open to reveal a crystal clear brook, and you’re eager to fill your canteen and continue exploring.

But there’s someone sitting on the opposite bank, stoking a small fire with a pot nestled in the low-burning logs.

He wears rich green clothes, and a red hat, but it’s the eyes that really let you know this is a Joxter. They’re feline, not dark and warm like your father’s, but paler, caramel brown. He’s watching you.

The brook chatters; the birds sing; the fire crackles. Light catches his eyes and they flash gold, for just a second.

“Hullo there,” he says.

 _Avoid other Joxters._ But you’ve never talked to one before: in the past, you always managed to evade them before they glimpsed you. Now you aren’t quite sure what to do.

“How lucky, for one of you to simply stray across my path.” The Joxter wraps his arms around himself in a hug, and looks at you with something close to reverence. “I’m never so lucky as that.”

A frightened smile flits to your lips, while your eyes look back at the way you came. You feel frozen, like a startled deer. There’s something unnatural about this Joxter, even down to the lulling way he speaks, and the gentleness of his movements. He has done nothing outright bad, but your instinct warns you anyway, like a rabbit in the presence of a sated wolf.

The Joxter makes a soft noise. “You _smile_ too, lovely.”

You try to wake your muscles up, to tell them to do anything but just stand there.

“Don’t be rude, dear. Why don’t you join your papa by the fire? This water’s no good to drink if you don’t boil it.”

“You’re not my papa,” you say automatically.

His eyebrows lift, his lips part in surprise. You think you should run.

“You sound so certain,” he murmurs, as if it were an unimaginable thing. He leans forward, gazing at you with his not-quite gold eyes. “Do you know your papa, little Snufkin?”

Suddenly, you are no longer frozen. You run.

You run until you can’t hear the brook any longer, and until your lungs ache with the exertion. Joxters, blessedly, are a lazy group, and as your father had said, they are unlikely to give chase to something that warrants effort.

Still, the memory lingers and sets little chills along your skin. Maybe it’s superstition, but you’re very certain there was something else in his words, something wrong and poisonous.

Why do Joxters have to be so unnerving? And why isn’t your father at all like that? The subject makes you feel unsafe, like you’re being watched, and so you quickly try to put the whole matter out of your mind.

Your heart has time to settle, and thirst pricks at your throat, before you realize that the feeling of being watched has never left.

Hairs rise at the back of your neck, and it can’t be the effect of the Joxter by the brook, because it’s been nearly half an hour since then. Surely he hadn’t followed you?

The thought sets you on a high alert. Maybe this Joxter had more energy than most?

You continue on, this time with all your attention focused on the woods around you. First, you hear a rustle of leaves, the bouncing of a tree branch. Maybe the wind? Then, definitely not the wind – scraping bark, something that might be the patter of feet.

Your eyes incrementally narrow. You don’t like mind games. You don’t like being toyed with. You spin around, about to demand that the Joxter reveal himself, when -

There’s a squeak, a thump, and a spray of leaves. Something had fallen out of the tree.

You halt, nose twitching. But the thing that rolls out of the leaves is very much _not_ the Joxter – it looks much more like a large black cat, and yet not like a cat at all.

It sits up, and shakes its head. Despite what must be horns on the top of its head, it looks very… harmless. Small, and strangely – of all things – wearing a bowtie and gloves.

The not-cat grins sheepishly up at you, “that was kinda dumb, huh?”

“It was. You weren’t following me, were you?”

He (you were reasonably certain it was a he) blinks in surprise. “Why would I be doing that?”

“Never mind.” You had doubted it, anyway, as soon as you saw him, because he didn’t really look dangerous.

He begins pulling leaves off his body, but they draw away with wet black strands of _something._

“Are you bleeding?” you ask, feeling rather obligated now that the thing had dumped itself out of the tree right in front of you (couldn’t he have waited a few minutes more?).

“No, no, it’s normal, it’s–“

“All right.” He seems unharmed, and he can surely handle things from here. You turn and walk away.

“Wait wait wait!”

If only things could be so easy. The not-cat scurries after you. He’s still covered in leaves and sticks.

“My name’s Bendy!”

You very much hope he hasn’t _already_ formed an attachment to you, as small things are wont to do. Far too many woodland creatures – woodies, and sprites, and too many others – had latched on to you and viewed you as some sort of leader or caretaker. The responsibility is far too great, and you don’t understand the premise of their trust in you. You prefer to travel alone – or with the Joxter, because he’s capable of handling himself. As for the small critters that trailed after you, you do wish that someone would look after them, but you aren’t the person for the job.

Unfortunately, it seems that Bendy, like the others before him, doesn’t grasp that. “You’re Snufkin, right?” he asks, trotting at your side and peering up at you.

“I suppose so.”

“It’s tricky to tell, 'cause your eyes don’t look like most Snufkins’.”

You don’t know how he knows that, but you don’t like that he does. Your father had once said your eyes looked less like a Snufkin’s, and more like a Joxter’s. He had said it in a positive light, which made you feel good, but you didn’t really like it being pointed out by others. “Mh,” you answer.

“Where ya headin’ off to?”

“I don’t know.”

Bendy shields his eyes and hums thoughtfully, “let’s see, trees, trees, aaaand more trees, huh?”

“Mh.”

“Oh, I know a cool place! I could show-”

“No, thanks.”

Bendy frowned. “I didn’t even get to tell you anything about it! How do ya know you don’t want to go?”

You don’t answer at first, because there’s no good way to say that you simply don’t want company. “I’m not a good person to travel with,” you finally settle on.

“Why’s that?”

“I don’t like people or conversations.”

“Well, that’s blunt.”

“So maybe you should go.”

“Oh, but I like people! And conversations! Maybe we can compromise. I won’t talk but I can hang around?”

“You could find someone else to talk to,” you suggest, and entirely fail to make it sound polite.

Bendy spreads his arms as if to hug the entire forest. “There’s nobody here!”

“There’s the Joxter,” you say, and then stop, because however annoying Bendy might be, you can’t in good conscience send him off to someone you regard as dangerous (even if you aren’t sure how exactly he is dangerous). You’re about to revise your suggestion when Bendy declares,

“I wouldn’t mess with someone like him!”

“Oh.” Good, so you don’t have to explain. Curiosity takes root, though, because it sounds like Bendy actually knows more than you do about the subject, and maybe he knows why Joxters are generally trouble.

You tug your backpack higher on your shoulders, and consider how to go about asking for more information without making it sound like you want to keep traveling with him.

But when Bendy opens his mouth next, you fear he’s going to derail the conversation entirely, so you hurriedly cut in, “say, what is it about Joxters that makes them dangerous?”

“You mean you don’t know?”

His tone is annoying: you wouldn’t have asked if you knew. “Never mind.” You put your head down and walk faster – Bendy speeds up summarily.

“Well wait – you’ve never met a Joxter, really? Ever?”

“I know one,” you say guardedly.

“So the one wanted you all to himself, then!”

“He didn’t want to _own_ me,” you argue, “He’s my father! He looked out for me and protected me.”

“Really?!”

At first, you’re angry, because it sounds like he doesn’t believe you. But then you remember how your father emphasized most Joxters don’t look after their sons, and you think maybe Bendy’s reaction is a compliment to your dad’s kindness.

Introspective, you finally slow down to a pace that Bendy can easily match.

“Why are you so surprised?” you ask. “What are other Joxters like?”

“Oh, they do all kinds of things you shouldn’t do, usually just because you shouldn’t do them.”

Well that didn’t sound so bad. In fact, it’s very familiar, because that’s how your own Joxter is – and that’s how you are. There’s nothing like being told you _can’t_ do something to make you _want_ to do it. You have a great disdain for the many Hemulens and all their signs reading out rules they just expected people to follow, like Keep Out and Don’t Walk On Grass.

“They like to kill Snufkins, I hear,” Bendy added.

You look sharply at him.

“Like how cats play with mice, y'know.” He relays that information with an inappropriate level of glee.

“What?”

“Oh, it’s true. I wouldn’t lie about somethin' like that! Twisted, ain't it?”

“They wouldn’t.”

“They do. They rape Snufkins, too. Can you imagine?”

You can’t imagine, because you aren’t actually sure what the word ‘rape’ means. It doesn’t sound like a good thing, though, and you tighten your grip on your backpack straps. _Do_ Joxters kill Snufkins? “How do I know you’re not lying?”

“Well, ya don’t really, but I was just making conversation. What do _you_ think Joxters do?”

You have no idea, really, and until today hadn’t actually thought too hard on it. Maybe they do kill Snufkins. “Why would a father do that?” you wonder, ignoring Bendy’s question.

“Because you shouldn’t, probably. And for fun too – I don’t think anybody would do something _only_ because you shouldn’t. There’s pleasure in the whole business.”

You don’t like this conversation. You’re here to enjoy nature, and peace, and a new land, and instead you’re unsettled and nervous. You wish you hadn’t asked, because you still don’t know if it’s the truth, but whether it is or not, the thought of Joxters routinely murdering their sons gives you a surreal sense of terror. That terror doesn’t belong here, with fresh spring grass and young trees and brown-capped mushrooms.

“I guess they just have a _thing_ for Snufkins,” Bendy ruminates, “Somethin' about the way Snufkins look when they’re scared. I’m really amazed your own father never-“

“Stop.”

Bendy looks up at you in confusion.

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

“That was pretty insensitive; I’m sorry.” He doesn’t sound exceptionally sorry, and you begin to dislike his company for a very different reason than before.

When you don’t reply, he launches into another question out of the blue, “so, where are ya from, Snufkin?”

“Not here.”

“Oh, very clever,” Bendy says flatly, but he’s grinning, “you aren’t much of a talker, eh? Say, where’s your father at?”

“Not here.”

“Are you going-“ Bendy starts, and you interrupt,

“What are you?” If he’s going to be hanging around, you'd rather be the interrogator than the interrogated.

Bendy places a hand over his heart. “Aw, you care to ask about me!”

You sigh, and wonder how easily you can outrun Bendy. With his little legs, surely he can’t move very fast? It might be worth it, to have some peace.

“I’m a demon,” he answers, and tugs importantly on his bowtie. “An ink demon, if ya wanna be specific.”

Your brow furrows. You’ve heard stories of demons – tricky monsters that lure people into giving up their souls. You’ve always imagined them to be a lot… well, bigger and scarier. “You look more like a cat than a demon.”

“Meeow,” Bendy paws the air and grins coquettishly at you.

“Please never do that again.”

“Mroww.”

You consider the merits of chasing him off with your pocketknife.

“Meeeoww.” Bendy at this point wanders from your side, and jumps around a bit, making cat noises and fwipping his tail this way and that.

He’s completely insane. But as long as he’s busy with… whatever he’s doing… you can refocus on your surroundings. The conversation made you lose track of your bearings. At some point, you’ll need to come across another vantage point above the valley and gauge location. For now, finding water is priority.

You pull out your canteen, and find only a small amount of liquid sloshing at the very bottom. It’s warm. You regret not returning to a different section of the brook earlier in the day.

Sighing, you kneel beside some large-petaled flowers.

“Watcha doin’?” Bendy asks, peering over your shoulder.

“Checking for dew. Water can stay gathered in flower petals and leaves.”

“Aw, that’s too bad – looks like it’s all dried from the sun.”

He’s right, but you can see that for yourself. You stand, and resignedly continue on your previous direction – sooner or later you’ve gotta come across something, right?

“I didn’t know you were looking for water,” Bendy comments.

“Water is usually important.”

“If that’s what you needed, then why didn’t ya just ask?”

You glance sideways at him. Of course. He’s probably familiar with this area. “I didn’t think to.”

“Well, there’s a stream not far from here. It’s all the same to me if we go or not, but I’d be happy to show ya.”

You _almost_ turn down the offer, because you like to manage things on your own. But the reality is, this is the first time you’ve gone somewhere entirely new without the Joxter, and you have to admit you’re a bit underprepared. It would have been fine if you’d gotten water from the brook in the morning, but… you hadn’t, and now you aren’t sure how to get back to the brook, or where any other body of water is.

“All right,” you concede reluctantly.

A too-wide smile breaks across Bendy’s face. “Just follow behind me then!” He heel-turns and goes almost directly in the opposite direction you were heading.

Begrudgingly, you follow.

Along the way, more and more of the white curly-q flowers appear, as do trees with long hanging branches burdened by vines in full bloom, looking like bunches of white fox tails.

Bendy rambles on about random things, and you mostly tune him out. The sun overhead begins to wane. You drink the last of your water and nibble on some almonds you had brought with you.

Another hour passes. Your attention diverts to the surroundings, which are getting _weirder_. At this point, most of the trees are the variety with white dangling flowers, and the sheer number of them creates a seamless wave of ivory over your head. Meanwhile, the ground is roughed up in a definite path, as if frequently tread, and there are gouge marks in the earth and on the trees. Really _deep_ gouge marks.

A wary buzzing starts in the back of your head.

“Uh, Bendy?” you interject his current story, the details of which escape you.

“-matter what I did, I couldn’t-“ Bendy glances back. “Aw, c’mon, ya weren’t listening at all!”

“Are we going the right direction?”

“Of course we are! I know this part of the forest like the back of my hand.”

The wariness deepens further when you see something dangling beneath the white flowers: it’s fishing line strung between two trees, and hanging on it, a series of old harmonicas in a variety of colors, mostly bronze with rusted and dented edges.

“What is that?” you utter.

“They’re harmonicas, obviously,” Bendy calls back.

“Yes, but-“

“Do you play a harmonica?”

“Why are they there?”

“A lot of Snufkins do.” This whole time, Bendy has been trotting several feet ahead of you, but now he turns, and smiles. The tip of his tail curves up.

This part of the forest is very, very quiet. No birds sing, no animals chatter.

You stop. Something about this place isn’t right.

Bendy tilts his head to the side. “Aren’t ya coming? You wanted water, right?”

“I…” The white foxtail vines wave overhead in a listless breeze. Their petals whisper against each other. Suddenly, you aren’t so sure this was a good idea.

“Hey, come on. We’re almost there. Right around the corner.”

You can’t hear any water, though. The harmonicas sway on their fishing line, and make an empty whistling noise. You take a step back.

When Bendy next speaks, any facsimile of kindness is gone. There’s only raw, dark excitement. “You’re not gonna run, are ya?” He says it like he wishes for nothing more.

You don’t have any time to think about it before you’re already careening back down the path, your backpack abandoned and your legs churning. But you don’t make it far before something much bigger and much stronger crashes into your back. You hit the dirt hard, your teeth clack over your tongue, and you taste blood.

Bendy lands on top of you, except there’s something really wrong, because the hand that settles on your head is big enough to crush your skull.

“I’m sorry-“ you gasp out past a swollen tongue, “I’m sorry I was rude, I can listen, I can-“

He slams your head against the ground, and there’s a wet _crunch_. When you dizzily lift your head, you can’t breathe through your nose any longer, and your eyes are smarting with tears.

Then, suddenly, he steps off of you. He’s letting you go – he’s seeing reason; you’ll be free –

Bendy seizes your ankle and forcefully drags you back up the path.

“N-nno-“ Your fingers feel like useless stubs of meat as you scrabble futilely for purchase, and one fingernail tears up to the cuticle. You don’t know where he’s taking you but it can’t be anywhere good – the only thing that matters is getting free. You twist around to pry off his grip, but in doing so, glimpse a skeletal black spine, a long prehensile tail, and oh creator above, he’s much _much_ taller. The sight makes you feel faint.

“P-please,” you beg, your back riding over rocks and roots, “y-you don’t want – we talked, we got along-“

Your hip pops as he slingshots you forward and lets go – for a second, you’re weightless, and then you hit a tree trunk and crumple. Your breath is coming heavy and fast, in short sips like your lungs won’t expand. You’re going to die. This is it. All your caution, all your care, none of it matters now, because _you’re going to die._

“Oh,” a voice says placidly. “I was wondering when you were going to bring him.”

Dizzily, you lift your head and amidst a sea of white and green you see dancing gold eyes. The Joxter? But why is he – _Joxters like to kill Snufkins, I hear._ It clicks, amazingly fast for how foggy your brain is. They know each other.

You think about the harmonicas dangling on a wire. _Do you play a harmonica? A lot of Snufkins do._

Then your vision is filled with black, and teeth like knives dig into your shoulder.

The Joxter makes a sharp sound under your scream, but you don’t hear it. Bendy’s teeth grind over your raw collarbone.

“Don’t kill this one,” the Joxter utters quickly. “I want to keep him.”

There’s a second of hesitation, a second where Bendy’s jaw tightens over the meat of your shoulder. Then he releases. His horned head draws away, ink and blood dripping from his maw. For a moment you see the two of them, both their horrible grins, and you think, _this can’t be real._ You’re dreaming. But your shoulder burns like fire. They look at you like they’d love to devour you.

Tears prick at your eyes while a wavering, flinching smile wanders to your lips. The absurdity of it hits you - that all three of you are smiling, and you want to curl up and die and never have to be this afraid.

There’s no mercy like that. Bendy drops on all fours and slinks behind you. There’s a brief, pitiful struggle, which ends with you kneeling, his tail wrapped around your ankles and his arms wrapped around your chest, restraining you.

Through hazy vision you watch the Joxter slowly come closer.

“Why are you smiling?” he coos, “does it make you happy, knowing you’ll be protected by a loving Joxter?”

An unconscious burp of a laugh works up your throat and you hate yourself immensely.

The Joxter’s eyes go round. “Oh, you find it-“

“It’s a nervous habit, I can’t-“

“funny, do you?”

“control it.”

“It’s rude to interrupt.” He strikes you so hard that you bite through your cheek. Nobody has ever hit you. Even when your papa was fiercely angry with you, he had never raised a hand in violence.

Slowly, you meet his eyes, and you are deathly silent.

“Oh,” the Joxter breathes, eyes softening into reverence. “You really are pretty.”

You aren’t. You really aren’t, and you’re scared. “Let me go.”

“No. That would be such a waste of a Snufkin, don’t you think?” The question isn’t addressed to you. Behind you, Bendy chuckles.

The Joxter reaches out, and his gloved paws caress over your cheeks. He reeks of sweat and pine and smoky tobacco. His eyes are on your lips. “May I kiss you?” he murmurs.

You blink, barely able to comprehend what he had asked.

Then he leans in. All you can think is that you don’t want what he’s about to do. “NO!” You twist your head away, but Bendy wrenches your chin forward and holds you firmly in place.

“Don’t be a prude,” the Joxter chastises. After that, you have no choice. The Joxter tastes like stale tobacco smoke, and his tongue is thick and wet. You’ve never been kissed before. You never wanted to be. You imagine his breath gumming up your lungs like tar, staining something that for so long had only breathed the wild. You laugh once, stupidly high-pitched, and your teeth clack against his. Hands wander under your overcoat, touch your belly and your chest and nobody has ever touched there before.

Nobody ever _should_. But the Joxter has no care for that. Then Bendy twists your head up violently enough to make your neck ache, exposing your throat to the Joxter’s attention. His whiskery lips speckle chaste kisses down the exposed flesh, and then he pauses, his mouth hovering over the bleeding bite mark. You whimper.

“Don’t- please, let me go-“

His lips press against the torn flesh; his tongue wriggles into a puncture wound.

“S-stop – stop!” You convulse, but Bendy’s grip only tightens – tightens enough around your throat that you fear if you even move one inch, he’ll snap your neck. Pointlessly, helplessly, you begin crying, and once you start, you can’t stop.

The Joxter croons against the injury. “There’s no need for that, dear… We’ll keep you very safe.”

Hatred boils in your chest. You know safety; you know peace. This is neither. When the Joxter kisses your lips again, you bite, _hard_ , and feel an angry thrill at tasting blood.

The Joxter yanks away, nursing his lip. His eyes are a deadly bronze, but Bendy reacts first. In a movement much too fluid and too fast for you to process, you’re suddenly sprawled out on your back, and the demon is on top of you, his jaws wrenched apart to reveal a cavernous mouth and a throat dripping with black ink. A forked tongue slithers from behind his teeth.

“ _Bendy,_ ” you hear the Joxter say sharply, and then he appears at Bendy’s shoulder, gazing down at you disdainfully.

You’re fairly certain you’re hyperventilating either way, whether you’re going to get eaten or not, because your chest is rising and falling in rapid staccato beats and you can’t actually _breathe_ , even without anyone throttling you.

Hazily, absurdly, you watch as the Joxter scratches behind Bendy’s horns, and the demon finally lets his teeth snick back together again.

“I was going to lead up to it slowly,” the Joxter says thoughtfully, “but I think he needs to learn a lesson or two, hm?”

Anger again, and that’s _good_ , because it’s so so much better than the fear – you summon courage from somewhere deep in you, and spit at the Joxter. It misses, but he gets the idea. His gold-brown eyes narrow.

“Bendy,” he says softly, “would you mind holding him down for me?”

Bendy’s grin widens.

A frightened “no-“ leaps to your lips before you can stop it, but it doesn’t matter much in the end. Bendy crawls off of you, and clawed hands pin your wrists to the grass – you’re splayed on your back and much too vulnerable.

“Just like that,” the Joxter purrs.

Suddenly, the fear is back. You thrash, but Bendy’s claws are wrapped like webs around your wrists and they’re immovable as stone.

The Joxter settles between your legs. “Now, don’t be tedious, love. Just lay back and take it quietly, won’t you? I’m a Joxter that doesn’t enjoy much of a struggle, see… Not all of us have the energy we used to.” He chuckles at some personal joke, and sits back to tug at his waistline.

“Let me GO!” You kick out, and nearly catch him in the middle.

The Joxter doesn’t have to ask before black ooze is crisscrossing over your thighs. The amorphous ink clenches tight enough to bite into your skin, and it spreads your thighs open.

 _Snufkins can’t be bound by anything_ you think wildly, because the Joxter – _your_ Joxter – he had said that once, said that Snufkins were wild and untamable, like a leaf whipped in the wind, never tied down, always moving, always free. Always free.

You panic. There’s no nice way to put it. Your body convulses and thrashes and twists.

“Do hold still,” the Joxter instructs, holding a knife, “I’ve got to get your pants off one way or another, you know.”

“Get off of me!” It’s a breathy helpless scream of a statement.

More ink scrawls across your stomach, your chest, your throat, and it cages you in with impossible strength.

“Ah, that’s helpful.” The Joxter begins to cut away your pants.

Panic rattles in your chest, “Get off, get off! My papa-“

“I’m your papa,” he says with the reverence of a prophet.

“You _aren’t._ ”

“Whatever are you laughing for, dear?” The knife he has set aside. He instead grasps your hips, and pulls himself flush against you. A sharp pain invades your insides.

When you arch your head back to scream, a mouth closes over yours, but it’s not the Joxter’s. It’s all sharp teeth and wet oozing darkness that floods your mouth and pours down your throat.

“Now, don’t cough,” the Joxter scolds, “that’s very rude, you know.”

You can’t breathe. The long forked tongue forces its way into your mouth, coils around your tongue, and then pushes deeper.

There’s an ink-slick hand wrapping around your throat, and another dipping into your shirt, but that doesn’t make sense because both of Bendy’s hands are still holding down your arms.

“You should be grateful.” The Joxter sounds breathless. “It’s good to have an experienced Joxter to teach you these things… Good to have one that knows how to handle Snufkins. Otherwise you might get away with all kinds of bad behavior.”

Finally Bendy tears away; you gag and spit out ink, there’s still so much of it in your mouth, and you end up swallowing a lot of it. It’s slick and sticky and turns your stomach.

It’s at this point you notice you’re making a dumb bubbling gasp every time the Joxter slams into you, but you can’t stop it now that you've noticed, because it feels like he’s punching the air from your lungs with every snap of his hips.

“Some Joxters,” the Joxter continues, almost panting, “go gentle. Ah, hmm, they think… that Snufkins ought to be eased into these things. Hah… But, Snufkins - they need a firm hand, don’t they?”

You meet the Joxter’s eyes. He sighs deeply, and goes still inside you.

You aren’t yourself. You look down and don’t really comprehend how the spindly legs the Joxter kneels between are yours.

Then he slides out of you, stretches, yawns. You stare meaninglessly at his twitching whiskers. It’s only when Bendy appears beside him – back in the smaller form you had first witnessed - that you realize you’re no longer held down. You’re free.

But your clothes are soaked in ink, your skin splattered with it, and you feel something trickle out from between your legs. At some point, you had stopped crying, but now you start again, quiet, thick tears, and little hiccups.

“You don’t think he’ll die, do you?” The Joxter asks.

“Nah,” Bendy answers. “He’s in shock, I think. You’ll be able to keep him, no worries.”

“Mm.” The Joxter looks content at the reassurance. “I think I’ll nap, then.”

“Hey, aren’t you going to name him? You should always name pets!”

“I always forget your fondness for individual names…”

“Well?”

The Joxter gazes at you pensively. “All right, then. I think I’ll name him Happy.”


	3. Kissing

It’s evening. Deep purples spill across the sky, and little stars wink into existence. The white plants glow a faint blue in the fading dusk.

You could have been perched in a tree at this time, smoking and watching the sky. You could have been settled in by a creek, listening to the flowing water, nothing but nature as your companion. You could have…

Been anywhere else, really.

Instead, your arms are tied behind your back. Your pants hang in tatters off your legs, and your overcoat is irrevocably stained with the same ink that is spattered across your face, hair, and throat. You’ve cried yourself to exhaustion. 

Nothing is okay. Nothing is as it should be. 

This is impossibly different from everything you've ever known, and nothing you've learned had prepared you. Sage words from your father roll over and over in your head, advice covering all fronts of life, but exactly none of it can help you here. 

They dragged you to a clearing with the grass worn to dirt, decorated by luminous white flowers and surrounded with the white foxtail trees that whisper and rustle each other. 

On one side of the clearing, a grounded wooden canoe bears deep claw marks and a reddish stain. From its insides spills white cottony fluff, and the hint of a green blanket – this is where the Joxter had retreated to sleep. A great number of traveling packs gather at the outside hull of the canoe: your own pack has joined the collection, and you suspect that none of them were originally the Joxter’s. Finally, in the very center of the clearing is a ring of bone white stones encircling some charred wood.

They must live here, or at least spend a lot of time here, and it’s the worst place that you could possibly find yourself. 

But there has to be a way out. A plan that you can follow. Your father had more than once gotten himself into sticky situations, but he always kept his head and wormed his way out. Now it’s your turn to do it. 

… Except you don’t think your dad had ever been in _this_ much trouble, and you’re absolutely certain you don’t have his guile. 

“Heya Happy.” Bendy appears right at your side, and you flinch. “Aw, didn’t mean to scare ya. I was just wondering if you were thirsty.” Earlier, he had looted the empty canteen from your side; now he waves it in front of your face, and water sloshes.

“C’mon, I know Snufkins need this to live. I’m just being nice enough to bring ya some.”

You'd love to shove him away. But you get it now, that he’s really something you very much shouldn’t provoke. 

“I can’t help ya if ya don’t talk,” he sings, and bumps the canteen – with the cap still on – against your lips. 

When you fail to respond, he repeats this harder, and your lip smarts. “Please stop,” you rasp.

“That’s the thanks I get?” He sounds annoyed. You're not sure exactly how annoyed he has to get before he decides it’s more productive to hurt you.

“Why are you giving me water?” 

“Because Snufkins are fragile and die without it. They also die without food.”

Dying of thirst didn’t seem like the worst way to go, not anymore. “… Aren’t you just going to kill me anyway?”

“Oh, sure I will. I’m gonna devour you just like I did all the other Snufkins before you. Then I’m gonna add your harmonica to the fishing line. You do have a harmonica, right?” 

Your spine slicks itself to the tree trunk; your feet futilely try to push you further away.

“ _But_ ,” Bendy adds, “The Joxter must have found something he really liked in you, because currently I’m not supposed to kill you. Which means-“ he grins and unscrews the canteen’s cap. “I’m gonna try to keep you alive!” 

He jams the canteen to your lips again. Water splashes over your face, floods your nostrils and your throat; for a fraction of a second, you see splintering sunlight, hear the thrum of a river pressing your ear drums, feel the terrible weightlessness of being in the grip of something much stronger than you. 

When you come back to reality, you’re coughing out water, and Bendy’s looking at you like you’re crazy. You make a stupid, hoarse noise something like a laugh, but with your throat squeezed nearly closed. 

“Wow, you really freaked out there. It’s kinda cute how you’re smiling, though.”

You really desperately hope he never learns how much the idea of drowning bothers you.

“Hey, Happy, don’t’chya know you’re supposed to drink it?”

Then he wrenches at the follicles of your hair; your head is yanked up and water poured over your mouth: you do your best to swallow all the water that you don’t choke on, do your best (and fail) to avoid thinking about the river that had nearly drowned you.

When the canteen is emptied, he throws it to the side.

Your head hangs. Liquid drips from your chin. 

“You’re not even gonna thank me?” 

“Thanks.” 

His hands slip up under your overcoat. “N-no!” you recoil, heartbeat leaping -

Bendy draws away, your harmonica clutched in his fist. “Don’t look so nervous,” he smirks. “This is what I wanted, Happy.”

Right. The harmonicas are a collection from all the Snufkins they’ve murdered, and now Bendy’s got yours, and now you’re going to be next. 

“Say,” he settles against your side like you’re old pals, “it’ll be nice, having someone to talk to. The Joxter’s great and all, but he’s _always_ sleeping. I thought that the four or five hours the animators’ got was a lot, but the Joxter – wowee, he blows them out of the water.” 

This is followed by a series of squawking, clumsy notes played on your harmonica.

“What a waste of time, to sleep so much. Hey, how much do Snufkins sleep? We usually kill ‘em right off the bat, so I haven’t gotten the chance to learn.”

Fresh, silent tears prick at the corners of your eyes.

“You’re not a very good conversationalist.” That annoyed edge is back. He dislikes one-sided conversations. 

“Seven hours?” you offer weakly. 

“Seven hours?” Bendy looks dismayed. “That’s forever!” 

“Nh.” Your eyes flick to him, then back to the ground. “And you?” You don’t care in the slightest, except you want to know when you can expect the demon to start getting tired. 

“Oh, I don’t sleep.” 

It takes several seconds before you feel okay enough to ask, “at all?” 

“Huh?”

“You don’t – don’t sleep at all?”

“I don’t even think I _can_.” He follows this up with more screeching attempts at the harmonica. 

Midway through, a sharp voice interrupts, “ _Bendy!_ ” Two tired irises, nearly black in the darkness, are peering over the side of the canoe, and the Joxter looks very displeased. “Enough with the harmonica.”

The demon sticks out his tongue petulantly.

The Joxter’s eyes narrow: it’s enough to set chills along your spine again, despite the juvenility of the situation. 

Bendy puts the harmonica to his lips and makes a noise as obnoxiously loud as he possibly can. Then – both to your relief and the Joxter’s - he sets the instrument aside. “Fine, I’m done.”

The Joxter disappears back into the cottony fluff of his canoe.

“See what I’m talkin’ about?” Bendy whisper-hisses at you. “He sleeps so much!”

You’re so exhausted and so tired of fear that you just want to collapse. It’s surreal and disorienting that Bendy is still trying to maintain casual conversation. 

“I guess you do, too.” Bendy frowns. “Ya look terrible.”

“Nh.”

“See, the fun thing about you though, the Joxter doesn’t care if I interrupt _your_ sleep.”

 

 

Waking up is like death. One moment, you feel weightless and blissfully detached, not part of reality and not burdened by its evils. The next moment, you’re stuck in a body that hardly feels like yours anymore – one bitten and abused and scoured from the inside. 

You don’t remember falling asleep, but you do remember Bendy talking through the night, poking you, tugging on your hair to keep you awake. That endeavor must have ultimately failed. The sun is almost directly overhead, and the Joxter and Bendy are sitting by the fire pit. The Joxter is nibbling on mushrooms, while Bendy is busy chewing on a dented metal pan. 

Neither of them have noticed you yet, and you don’t care to tune into the conversation they’re having in low, muted tones. 

The point is they’re not paying attention. And you have a pocketknife strapped to your hip. Trying to move slow, you hike your leg up (your insides twinge) and shimmy a bit to bring the pocket knife within range of your grasping fingers. As soon as you have a hold on it, you begin dragging the blade over the ropes. 

You can’t outrun Bendy, but if the demon leaves for any reason, you want to be ready. You'd much sooner take your chances against the Joxter, as you have yet to see him move any faster than a plodding walk.

But something in the subtle sawing motion must have alerted the Joxter, because he looks up and you freeze. “Oh, hullo. Are you hungry?” 

You are, but you’re not going to play along like this is a tender domestic scene, because it’s not.

“Still stubborn, then…”

“What are you planning on doing with him anyway?” Bendy asks.

The Joxter hums to himself. “I didn’t plan anything.”

“Then why are we keeping him?”

“Do we need a reason?” the Joxter replies, not rudely, but much as if the idea had never occurred to him.

“Well, yeah. You can't just keep someone for no reason at all! Then you might as well eat him.”

“I liked him alive. And now I like him, tied up right there. He has a nice smile. Most Snufkins don’t smile like that.”

“I know that.”

“Maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow and decide I don’t want him anymore, and then you can eat him. I’m not sure. Planning is a lot of work.” The Joxter licks a fleck of mushroom from his palm. “Better to do whatever one feels like doing, whenever one feels like doing it.”

It really gets under your skin, how close that philosophy sounded your father’s. Take life as it comes. 

“I guess.” Bendy glances at you. “I do like him. He’s not very talkative, though.”

“Give him time.”

“Waiting is boring. I want him to talk back more. And I thought I was going to get to eat him.”

“You’ll get to. Eventually.”

Bendy goes back to chewing on the pot. The Joxter meanwhile, sets himself to the task of grooming his whiskers, much in the way a cat would. Once this is done, he yawns and stands, his frightening amber eyes settling on you.

You shrink against the tree, closing your thighs tight. If only you had a different pair of pants, or a blanket, or _something._

He dawdles over, eyes lidded. “I can see you hate me, Snufkin.”

“Happy,” Bendy corrects. 

“Happy.” The Joxter pauses, takes a moment to roll the name on his tongue, then smiles. “Happy. But you’ll be grateful in time. Mm, yesterday you mentioned you knew your father?”

You’re silent.

The Joxter kneels in front of you. His eyes are treacherously gentle. “You think your father was a good man, don’t you?”

“He _is._ ” 

The Joxter’s expression wavers near heart-broken, if he had a heart to begin with. “Another Snufkin falling to that illusion… how cruel.” 

You bristle. 

“Don’t you find it strange, that your father seemed so different from other Joxters? That he didn’t hurt you, or make you afraid?”

“Because he’s a good person.”

“Oh, if only the world was so kind…” the smile he gives you is gentle but wrong, and you unconsciously mirror the expression. His fingers touch your cheek. “Snuf- _Happy_ \- I tell you this out of kindness. All Joxters desire their sons in this way.” His thumb grazes over your lower lip. “It’s simply how we are. But the way in which we go about it… that can differ, love.”

“Stop touching me.”

“You see, some Joxters are honest about their desires.” He’s looking at your lips, and rage boils in your stomach. It’s hot enough you can almost _almost_ convince yourself it drowns out the cold of fear. “I like to be an honest Joxter. Lying, and deception, that seems like such work.” He meets your eyes. “But some Joxters – and they do deserve credit – have the energy to lie.” 

You are very, very still.

“I’ve heard stories, dear. It’s a common scheme… the Joxter that raises his own Snufkin, and cares for him, and protects him. Tends to him, like one would a savory fruit. And then of course, when the fruit is healthy, full, and ripe, it’s time for harvesting.” 

“My pappa would never-“

The Joxter croons. “Oh, of course not, of course. But that is the whole idea, isn’t it? To build a young Snufkin’s trust, to whole-heartedly dedicate yourself to his upbringing and happiness… and then, when he is most trusting, when your bond is strongest…” The Joxter moans softly. “It’s such an exquisite thought.”

“He wouldn’t,” you growl. 

Whiskers tickle your cheeks. “I envy the Joxter that has so carefully cultivated your trust.” 

“He didn’t-“ but then the Joxter is kissing you again. That smoky taste fills your mouth, and it sickens your stomach that it resembles the rich tobacco your father would smoke. 

You tear your head away and gasp for breath. Bendy has slunk closer in the interim, and now watches curiously.

“How do you kiss so nicely?” he interjects. 

“Much practice,” the Joxter sighs, caressing your cheeks. 

“I want to learn.”

“Hm?” Temporarily ripped from his thoughts, the Joxter glances at Bendy. “Any talent is wasted on a Snufkin. They won’t ever appreciate the things you can do with your lips and tongue. Your methods are perfectly acceptable.”

“Maybe, but it’s messier than what you do. I’m all clumsy about it.”

“It’s a delight to watch, though. You’re very, hm, forceful.”

While Bendy preens, the Joxter gazes into your eyes. “Isn’t that right, Happy?”

A phantom sensation coils in the back of your throat; you almost gag from the memory alone. 

“Can I try?” Bendy asks.

There’s never any question about whether you want it or not: the idea isn’t even on the table. You look between the two of them, and make a faint noise as if to remind them you exist.

“Shush, Happy.” Then, to Bendy, “What is there to try?”

“To kiss better, obviously.”

The Joxter looks puzzled. “I already said your methods were perfectly acceptable.”

“Yes, but-“

“I don’t want-“ you start to say.

“ _Shut up_ ,” Bendy snaps at you. 

The Joxter seems to have thought better about arguing. He gets right off without another word spoken; Bendy eagerly crawls onto your lap to take his place, and you fully understand that, yet again, your choice and opinion are not considered, not wanted, not welcome. You don’t feel human. You’re a toy, to be traded off between the two of them. 

Thick fingers tug at your scarf, tickle over your neck, stroke up your cheeks.

“Do relax,” the Joxter says, touching your shoulder. “This is what Snufkins are for.”

Then Bendy leans in. The sensation is weird, physically soft in a way the Joxter isn’t, but you feel oddly disconnected from what’s happening. What are you supposed to look at? Should you move? You should probably be doing _something_ right about now, but instead you’re just sitting, stiff as a board. Then, worse, you’re smiling, and that makes everything _weirder_. Your eyes flick to the side and meet the Joxter’s, and you don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Something wet drags over your lips, but doesn’t slip in. 

“You really don’t have to be delicate,” the Joxter murmurs – he sounds disappointed.

Bendy pulls away. “I wanna learn how to do it right. How am I doing so far?”

You watch the two of them in a distant, numb disbelief. 

“Hrm.”

“That’s not helpful, ya know. I’m looking for advice!”

“Harsher,” the Joxter suggests.

“Joxterr,” Bendy whines, “I _always_ do it harsher.”

“And it’s positively lovely that way.”

“At least give me a tip, or a pointer.”

The Joxter sighs. You must be losing your ability to be shocked, because in the next moment, the Joxter cradles either side of Bendy’s head, and draws him into a kiss, and all you do is stare emotionlessly. It isn’t long before he steps back and returns his hands to his pockets. “If you want to learn how to kiss like a gentleman, I can teach you what I learned from Mymbles. But Happy is a Snufkin, and you've no need to treat him so kindly - so long as you're not eviscerating him.”

Bendy tilts his head to the side. “All right. Only if you’re willing to teach me later.”

“I urge you to have _fun_ with Happy. No need for politeness.” 

Bendy turns to look at you, and his face splits into a grin - but it’s impossibly wide, and crammed with too many sharp teeth. Ink flows over his eyes, and your heart has a fraction of a second to jitter in terror before he erupts into something much larger, much stronger, and dreadfully familiar.

“N-NO!” Your skull cracks against the tree trunk; his jaws close around your face. Immediately your mouth floods with the taste of ink, you’re suffocating on it, and your body jerks and spasms like an electrocuted doll. By pure instinct you try to bring your hands up to protect yourself, only to have the ropes snag again and again and remind you that you’re entirely helpless to stop this. 

Your eyes roll up, and meet with the dancing amber eyes of the Joxter. He’s biting his knuckle and grinning. “It’s better this way, isn’t it?” he says, giddy. “Of course, I _do_ wonder how your father would have kissed you, too.”


	4. Fishing

“Don’t look so sad.” The Joxter pets your hair. You flinch from the touch, not that it does any good. “I doubt he _meant_ to bite.”

You don’t think he bit so much as just had his teeth too close to your skin. If any actual biting was involved, you wouldn’t have a face anymore.

“It doesn’t look too awful,” the Joxter adds. It’s supposed to be reassuring, you assume. Whatever it looks like, you can feel the sore pricks along your cheeks, and you’re still trying to catch your breath from the conviction of certain death.

“He’s still pretty,” Bendy inputs, back in his normal form and grinning like he’s rather full of himself.

“Oh, undoubtedly.”

“He’s bleeding.”

“Only a little.”

“No, not that-“ Bendy skirts behind you and grabs your hands. Thick liquid squelches through your clenched fingers, and confusion swims in. Why your hands-?

“He’s got a knife,” Bendy laughs. “He cut himself with it.”

Oh. The pocketknife. You’d forgotten. It had been clenched in your fists this entire time, and you must have squeezed it.

Bendy peels the sticky blade from your fingers.

“A clever Snufkin,” The Joxter murmurs. “He must have been trying to cut his ropes. I suppose we were negligent, hm? Didn’t check for weapons.” The Joxter gazes down like one would look at a particularly endearing but troublesome pet. “Well, you didn’t need to be so dramatic. Go on and free him, Bendy. We’ll have to tend to that.”

You don’t know what Bendy does exactly, but the ropes around your wrists go slack. You bring your hands before your eyes, and they’re dripping with red. A slit runs through both of your palms, covered by a flimsy flap of skin.

“What a mess. I’ll get supplies.”

Bendy grabs your wrist.

“Wait-“ you start to say, and then he drags his tongue under the sliced skin.

“Nf.” You shudder, but don’t try to fight back. It’s better that he does this than something worse.

When the Joxter returns with bandages and a bottle of alcohol, he notes, “ you’ll give him ink poisoning that way.”

“Nuh-uh. I’ve done this before.”

“Hmm.” He shoos Bendy aside and tends to your hands. This is something that, as a child, you probably would have whined and complained and screamed about. Something your father would have to attend to with the infinite patience you had never appreciated enough. But now, you tolerate all of it with silence. There are worse pains, worse evils.

“Good boy,” the Joxter tells you. He leaves a small kiss on your bandaged palm that leaves you feeling sick inside. “Bendy, stop playing with knives.”

The demon freezes in the middle of an imaginary knife fight.

“That blade isn’t worth cleaning; we ought to toss it.”

“Aw. I like it.” Bendy takes to licking the bloodied knife, and then you stop being able to watch.

The Joxter stretches, yawns. His nose twitches. With a soft, certain manner, he says, “We ought to go fishing.”

You look at your bandaged hands. A hint of cherry red leaks through the very center on each hand.

“Ooo, I love fishing!”

“The way you do it defeats the entire purpose.”

“I’m efficient. I catch the fish. Isn’t that the whole point?”

“The joy of fishing is the wait. It’s the lapping of water, the rocking of your boat, the patient, thoughtless day spent in the sun.”

“Okay, I’m just sayin,’ if that’s what fishing is all about, it shouldn’t be called fishing.”

“You might have a point.” The Joxter meanders back to his collection of packs and begins to dig out supplies, but you barely notice that because Bendy has decided to wander closer, and he’s still holding your stained pocketknife.

“Hey, Jox?”

“Mh?”

“Shouldn’t we give Happy some pants or somethin’?”

“Oh. Hmmhm. Try this.” He tosses clothing your way – simple tattered brown trousers, but they’re at least not cut to shreds like your own. You don’t wait to be asked before you’re shimmying out of your pants and clumsily pulling on the new pair. Modesty isn’t worth worrying about, when your previous pair hadn’t been doing anything in that regard anyway. You try not to think on the fact you’re probably wearing clothing from a dead Snufkin.

But then you’re standing, and feel even more out of place. Nothing is tying you down anymore, and you have every ability to just _run._ Standing at half your height and clutching your pocketknife, Bendy smiles. You've never felt so trapped without being physically restrained.

“Ah, here you go.” The Joxter reappears and pushes a fishing pole into your hands.

“I don’t want to go fishing,” you say numbly, ignoring the sting when the pole presses to your bandages.

“Now, you don’t need to get fussy about it. Think of how good dinner will be with a nice cooked fish.”

Your chest is tightening with nerves. If you go with him, things are going to end badly again. Something will happen, and you don’t know what, but you have no doubt it will be awful. “I don’t want to do _anything_ with you.”

“That’s terribly impolite.”

“Why ya gotta be such a wet rag, Happy?” Bendy frowns. “We didn’t ask your opinion, ya know. You’re coming whether ya want to or not.”

“Snufkins can be so crabby,” the Joxter remarks.

“Right? He’s barely smiled at all today. What is it, ya didn’t sleep well?”

Chuckling, the Joxter slings a pack over his shoulder, “did you keep him up all night?”

“ _Noooo_ , I would never.”

“You know that makes guests grumpy, darling.”

“It wasn’t _all_ night. He passed out right in the middle of me analyzing the lowered quality of the third season of my show. Which is a _very_ interesting topic.”

“How rude.”

“Exactly!”

The Joxter pauses and looks back at you. “Well, aren’t you coming?”

You don’t really have a choice. Mutely, you force your legs to walk.

The three of you wind through the forest, with them ahead and talking quietly, and you trailing behind, clutching the fishing pole that you know must have come from another Snufkin. A Snufkin that is not alive anymore. Maybe the same one whose clothes you took, maybe a different one.

Maple and evergreen trees sprout up, and gradually the white foxtail trees dwindle to nothing. Lush red and black berry bushes appear and the Joxter sneaks many a berry along the way. At one point, Bendy bores of your pocketknife, and throws it to the bushes. Still you walk onwards, and wish you could enjoy nature, but the entire experience is ruined and wrong. You might be untied, and in the middle of nature, but you are far from free, and freedom is so very much of what you find appealing in the wilderness.

As the sun wanes, you hear trickling water. Normally, it doesn’t bother you – water brings life, and your fear had become a distant, smothered thing, soothed over by years spent by brooks and creeks and rivers and lakes.

But in the last two days, you've been held down against your will, dug into, and played with, having no power or choice over how your own body is used or harmed. The sound of water bothers you now, even if it shouldn’t.

The three of you emerge from the trees, and a broad lake sprawls out, deep blue and sparkling, fed into by several bubbling channels. It looks too beautiful for all the things that have happened recently. It also looks deep, and dark. Something that a person could very easily drown in.

The Joxter slings his stolen pack into a small rowboat that sits at the edge of the water. “I thought we were lucky to acquire just one boat,” he says, directing this statement at you. “But it was quite fortuitous – we found this one shortly after getting the canoe. Very lucky, since the canoe was in no condition to be floating anymore.”

You can guess easily whose fault that is when Bendy laughs.

“Well, come along, Happy.” The Joxter gestures to the boat.

Somehow, you had thought fishing meant you’d be standing on a dock. Not going out in a boat with him and Bendy, all together in a small space surrounded by water.

“I…” you take a step back.

“Aw, he’s smiling again. I love it when he smiles.”

You look behind you, to the forest that you dream of disappearing into.

Then Bendy’s hand tugs on your overcoat, and there’s a warning in his eyes. “C’mon Happy. You’re not gonna run, are ya?”

Shaking legs carry you into the boat, and you sit down.

The Joxter gestures. “Bendy?”

The ink demon shakes his head. “Nuh-uh. Fishing that way is boring. I’m staying here.”

“I’ll catch something for you, then.”

The Joxter pushes the boat off the bank, and hops in after you – then you’re afloat, adrift. Your stomach churns. There’s no leaving the confines of the boat, and it feels ever so small, weightless, detached. The Joxter paddles the two of you into the lake center so you’re at the heart of it, like a lonely star in the vastness of space. As far from land as you can be. He sets the oar on the floor, and lets the boat drift.

“So peaceful, isn’t it?” he breathes deep. Peaceful is not how you would describe it. Your knuckles are white over the fishing pole handle.

The Joxter folds his calloused hands over yours, corrects your grip. “Like this, love.”

“I don’t-“

“Shh.” With his help, you mechanically throw the line out.

“I know how to fish,” you say weakly.

“You're just awful at it, then. Your father didn’t teach you very well.”

Anger, fleeting and weak. “I know how to fish, I’m just-!”

He squeezes your thigh, and smiles sympathetically. “You’ll learn, dear.” Your hands shake on the pole while his calloused fingers roam up and down your inner thighs. “Snufkins are so soft,” he sighs. “It’s been much too long since I admired one on my own time.”

Your thigh twitches as if to shake off his hand, but it’s utterly ineffective.

Without looking at him, you ask, “why are you doing this?”

“Because all Joxters do. One can’t help their nature. Horrid, isn’t it?”

Again you want to argue, because you know a Joxter that _isn’t_ like that, but you haven’t forgotten the spiel from this morning. That your father was raising you for…. You almost bite through your lip. He couldn’t have been, though. You know him. He only ever wanted the best for you.

“Even your father,” the Joxter whispers, as if reading your thoughts.

“No.”

He squeezes your thigh one last time, and then settles back in the boat. “I fear what he would do to you if we let you go. It was rather unkind of me, to take the fruit he had carefully grown and tended to.”

You try not to listen.

“I would understand if he is angry over it. A life’s work, stolen out and tarnished.” The Joxter sighs. “Sometimes, I think I’m too cruel. But it’s so very hard to resist.” He tries to meet your eyes, and you do your best to avoid looking at him, first by looking at the water, then the sky, then the forest. Motion catches your eye, and you see Bendy ranging along the bank in his monstrous four-legged form – he’s bolting after birds, circling, chasing them again once they land.

The Joxter chuckles, following your gaze. “Of course, he’s an atrocious influence on me, I’m sure. He makes it much easier to capture Snufkins. Before, you all were so fussy, so _difficult._ The sheer effort involved meant I hardly got to enjoy myself.”

You quaver to imagine just how many Snufkins have endured the same treatment as you.

The Joxter stretches, yawns wide. “To my understanding, he has very poor senses in that form. Poor sight, hearing.” The Joxter props his pack behind him and settles in a more comfortable position. “Sounds really very inhibiting, which I suppose is why he-“

Bendy pops back to his small form and tackles a loon. You look away when he begins to tear off its wings.

“-chooses to look like that most of the time,” the Joxter finishes.

“Are you ever gonna let me go?” you ask.

“No.” The Joxter takes long, appreciative gulps from the canteen at his side. He doesn’t offer it to you, and you know what the answer would be if you asked.

Things are quiet for a long while. You get nibbles on the line, but nothing bites. The sun bakes you into a haze, where you think of nothing, and feel little apart from the lingering awareness of the water’s depths, descending down and down and down beneath the boat’s bottom.

You glance at the Joxter. He’s fast asleep.

He looks odd in sleep, wrong. Too peaceful. But he’s also vulnerable like this. You could wrap the fishing line around his throat. Yank it good and tight. Throttle him until he goes limp.

Your fingers touch the fishing line, your eyes are on his throat. You've never killed before, nothing more than small rodents and animals for food (and even those bother you, just a little). But you think you could do it, if it’s this Joxter.

Then you look up, and see Bendy still loping along the bank, harassing any birds stupid enough to keep flying back. Quietly, you release the fishing line, and resign yourself to the fact you don’t dare hurt the Joxter.

Another hour passes. The boat has drifted close to the south bank, and Bendy’s curled up in a tree not far, when your line goes taut. Despite the stress and fear, you yourself had been on the very verge of falling asleep, but the yank on your hands jerks you to wakefulness.

Instinct kicks in, and in another moment or two, you have the fish reeled in and dangling by its line. You’ve fished a hundred times in your life, but it’s only now, looking at the gaping thrashing creature dangling by a hook in its mouth, that you suddenly feel regret.

“Oh! A trout. Quite a nice size, too.” The Joxter yawns as he rouses from his nap; his lidded amber eyes look pleased.

Part of you wants to unhook the fish and free it. Before you can act on that, the Joxter reaches out and unhooks it for you. He wraps both hands around its tail, then swings and cracks its skull hard against the side of the boat. The fish goes limp.

“Of course,” The Joxter says, “it’s a bit disappointing you only caught one. It’s hardly enough for the two of us.” He pulls a thin knife from his pocket, and methodically slits both gill plates. This done, he grabs the fish’s tail and dangles it over the side of the boat, letting its blood billow out into the water. “You can’t do anything right, love. Nothing except look pretty, which you’re quite good at. I suppose that’s all your father cared about in the end.”

 _That_ snaps you out of your haze, more than anything else, and rage rails against your chest. “He taught me everything I know.”

“Did he?”

“ _Yes_.”

“Hm, poorly. Enough for you to survive. I imagine he didn’t want to invest much effort.”

“He cared – cares – he saved my life!”

“Oh?”

“I was drowning, and he could have left me to die, but he didn’t – he put his own life at risk to save me!”

“He’s protecting his investment, dear. You wouldn’t want to spend so many years raising a perfect toy, only for them to up and kill themselves now, would you?”

“It isn’t-“

“You said you were drowning?”

You fall silent.

“Can you not swim?”

Your heart trembles. Although the boat had drifted closer to the bank, it’s not nearly close enough for you to feel safe.

“So you can’t,” he murmurs thoughtfully. He brings the drained fish from the water, shakes it, lays it down beside him. “How curious.”

Then, with a dexterity you would have never guessed from him, he grabs your hair and your thigh, and dumps you over the side of the boat.

Logic tells you to hold your breath; panic makes you suck in a huge lungful of water. You choke, water rushes into your nostrils. Sunlight and fresh air tease just out of reach, but your struggling thrashing motions only drag you further down. This is, you think, how you die. The end. And there's no peace, only terror.

Something wraps around your ankle - for a fraction of a second, you’re certain it’s going to pull you down into the abyss. Then your knee twists with the speed that it jerks you to the side; you let out a liquid-muffled howl, scramble to release its hold on you while your vision spots out and water floods your lungs.

Then you break the surface. Your body is dragged out onto the bank. Twisting onto your stomach, you vomit up a copious amount of foul-smelling lake water. And – you’re breathing. Coughing, but breathing. You’re alive. _You’re alive_. With dizzy, disoriented vision, you look up, and Bendy’s standing over you, dripping ink and water and making a diseased panting noise, as if drawing air through a partly clogged tube.

Wood scrapes hollowly against mud as the Joxter’s boat beaches itself nearby.

“Thanks,” you whisper uncertainly, looking at the huge teeth very close to your face. Ink drips into your hair.

The Joxter steps from the boat, dangling the dead fish by its gills. “I should tell you something, dear Happy. Just because someone saves you, doesn’t mean they want the best for you.”

Bendy growls. It’s a deep, wet, rumbling noise that has you pressing your body as close to the ground as you can, because he does not sound pleased.

The Joxter pauses. He suddenly seems very, very small in comparison to the monster standing over you. “I apologize,” he utters. “I ought to have given you some warning. I'd forgotten that you aren’t fond of swimming.”

You hear a sick gurgling noise, and then a diluted mix of water and ink is vomited out next to you – you cringe away but are still much too afraid to rise, because the tension hasn’t alleviated in the slightest.

“Ah-“ the Joxter starts.

Bendy interrupts with a sound somewhere between a cough and a burp. The next round of grey water has red swirls, bits of bone and chunks of bird flesh. It’s much much too close to your face, and it smells terrible. The demon lowers his head nearly to the ground, hacking wetly, and the last remnants of lake water splatter out.

“Oh,” the Joxter says. He’s beginning to look nervous. His fingers shift uncertainly in the fish’s gills, and his eyes dart to the side.

The next growl doesn’t sound so damp, but it’s just as low, and it holds longer. The Joxter arranges his face into an apologetic expression. “If I had known, I wouldn’t have done that… that was wrong of me. Very, very wrong.” He’s adopted a soothing, delicate tone. He unglues his feet and walks closer, every step deliberately controlled and relaxed. Bendy hasn’t stopped growling, and you’re flinching in anticipation of the Joxter getting ripped apart in front of you.

The Joxter is going to great lengths to pretend he doesn’t have the same fear. “I won’t do it again, darling. If ever I want to drown him, I’ll hold him down at the edge of water, and you can watch, hmm? Would you like that instead?” His feet stop right by your head (one of them on top of the mess soaking into the bank) and his free hand reaches up. You take the opportunity to slip out from between Bendy’s legs and skitter backward.

Your back strikes a rock and you freeze, staring on.

Bendy’s head is lowered, and the Joxter is scratching behind his horns. The demon has his mouth inches from the Joxter’s midsection, and his teeth are almost the length of the Joxter’s forearms. His body is long, skeletal, but abnormally melted, as water and ink continue to slough off him. “Look,” the Joxter susurrates, "I got you a fish - didn't you want a fish?" He's careful to work the trout in the space between his own stomach and Bendy's teeth. _Eat this, not me_ is the message that’s clear to you.

There’s a pause. Your heart thuds. Then Bendy’s tongue flicks out and curls around the fish before swiping it into his mouth. The Joxter, looking relieved, puts both hands to work, scratching and rubbing along the devil’s horns and the back of his head.

His eyes meet yours. You’ve never seen someone look so murderous while speaking so sweetly. “What can I do to make it up to you, hmm? Perhaps tell you where to find another Snufkin holed up? A friend for Happy? I have dearly missed seeing you tear Snufkins apart.”

Bendy chuffs; his head bumps against the Joxter’s chest. It’s a gentle, maybe affectionate motion, but the Joxter has to regain his balance from it.

“More of the petting?” the Joxter asks.

Bendy’s body shrinks and collapses against the Joxter, until there’s nothing left but his usual small cat-like form, nestled in the Joxter’s arms. “Yeah, keep doin’ that,” Bendy purrs, twining his tail around the Joxter’s arm. “Then maybe we can talk about another Snufkin. Happy’s great and all, but I sure do like when I don’t have to be careful.”

"It must be difficult, holding back around Happy."

"Oh, just terrible," Bendy agrees cheerfully.

The Joxter wanders close and kicks your side. “Get up. We’re going home.”

The last thing you want to do is follow them. They talk about killing Snufkins like a normal person would talk about… well, whatever normal people talk about. You certainly don’t have a good idea of that, but you’re sure it doesn’t involve murdering. Mutely, you rise from the sand. You’re filthy: covered in sand and dirt and reeking of lake water. The Joxter hardly looks any better, as he’s got ink stains across his entire overcoat. He turns, and walks away silently. Part of you thinks about running, and then dismisses it instantly. You wouldn’t get anywhere. And you’re exhausted, hungry, thirsty.

So you lower your head and follow them. With every step, your legs shake. Your heart hasn’t stopped hurting since the lake: in a distant, detached way you wonder if you damaged it somehow, through all that panic.

Nighttime is descending over the forest. Evening cicadas start their chorus, but you find no pleasure in it. You're tired of everything. You need to escape. You need a plan. But your brain feels as slow and plodding as your feet, and you push off plan-making for tomorrow, and pray they don't kill you between then and now.

About halfway to their lair, Bendy wriggles out of the Joxter’s arms and trots ahead, swatting at fireflies. The Joxter falls back, and joins your side. Walks with you. Your skin crawls. You hate company. You hate people. You hate the Joxter, and Bendy. The woods darken as you descend into a gentle dip, and as the sun creeps to its sleep. White foxtail trees begin to appear again. The Joxter’s eyes slide to you.

One moment he’s placidly walking beside you, and the next, his fist collides with your jaw. You stagger, touch your bleeding lip.

“Joxter-“

There’s hot rage in his amber eyes. In another second, he’s attacking you in earnest with close-fisted, full armed blows – pain explodes on your jaw, your ear – then your arm when you raise it to protect yourself, and your cheek when he manages to reach you anyway. The next strike dislodges a tooth from its root, and you’re tripping backwards, arms crossing in front of your head, but your ankle catches on a root and you go sprawling to the ground. The loose tooth hangs by a thread, and your other teeth clack against it when you instinctively bite down.

The Joxter falls on top of you, and his knuckles catch the corner of your eye. You make a noise somewhere between a gasp and a squeal, but can do little but cower against the rain of blows, arms flung protectively over your face. Several more powerful punches strike your chest.

It all happened so fast, then the Joxter leans in close. His expression is horribly, horribly calm. He speaks as if you're having a casual conversation, but there's a furious edge to his words, "Do not _ever_ upset him again."

Your breath rattles. You’re shaking, panting. Some muddled part of you thinks, _that’s wrong, I wasn’t the one that made Bendy angry_ – but the words that come from your lips are, “I’m sorry, ‘msorrymsorry.”

The Joxter stands. “You _are_ only a Snufkin. It’s not like you know any better.”

Bendy appears at his side, looking puzzled. “You've never done that before.”

“I was feeling unusually energetic. How exhausting.” The Joxter’s regard falls over you. “Don’t fall behind,” and then he moves off.

Bendy holds out his hand. “Ya want help up, Happy?”

No. You don’t want any help. Least of all his. You want to be alone. Heaven above, you want to sleep.

But he waggles his hand, and grins, and you don’t dare reject the offer.

Your hand clasps around his.

“Psych!” He yanks you so hard that you crash onto your front, and then he dances away giggling.

Ferns brush your cheek. Tears squeeze from your clenched eyes. Then, before you know it, you’re crying. Curled up on the forest floor, filthy, in pain, and crying. It's ugly, and inglorious. Thankfully, it’s also brief. There’s no energy for anything more. When you have no tears left, you rest your swollen cheek on the soil. You don’t want to move. You don’t want to exist. You just want to _sleep_.

The loose tooth is no longer attached, you realize. It’s nestled between your lower gums and your cheek. Tiredly, you spit it out.

“Wow, you really are dramatic,” Bendy remarks. “I play one prank, and then ya just break down. Talk about an easy target, huh?”

You close your eyes. Sleep. Peace. You imagine your father’s fingers carding through your hair, the way they would when you were feverish and he’d tell you stories to lull you to sleep.

_All Joxters desire their sons in this way._

No. You don’t want to think about that.

“Okay, come on.” Bendy kicks at your side. At first, you think you'd rather just lay there, but as his kicking gets more insistent, you find the willpower to get up and follow listlessly after him.

Then you’re back in the clearing. Home, as the Joxter had called it. His ink-stained clothes are littered by the side of his canoe-nest. He himself is curled up in the white stuffing of his canoe, wearing new clothes in a similar shade of green.

“Still awake?” Bendy asks.

“Mmmh.”

That’s apparently all the invitation the demon needs before he clambers into the canoe and nudges his way under the Joxter’s arm. “You promised,” Bendy says.

That’s when you avert your eyes.

Neither of them tied you up. Had they forgotten? No. They knew they didn’t have to. Knew they could drag you back. You're near to collapsing anyway. Now isn’t the time for escape attempts. You turn, and slink towards the tree they had earlier tied you to.

“You should know,” came the Joxter’s voice, and soon after his head appears over the canoe’s edge, “I can follow a Snufkin’s scent across many miles. But I’d much rather not have to invest the effort, dear.”

Oh. He thought you were leaving.

Bendy’s head pops up. “But feel free to run if you like,” he adds, and the Joxter casts him a dirty look.

“ _You’re_ not the one who has to track him down again.”

“I’m the one who drags him back, though. I do most of the work.”

The Joxter sighs, and flops back into the canoe. You hear him mutter, “you _enjoy_ it, though. That makes it entirely different.”

Bendy cups his hands around his mouth. “You can run,” he whispers, and makes a shooing motion.

You stare.

“Seriously. _Go_.” He winks and gives a thumbs up, before the Joxter peels him away from the canoe’s edge.

You collapse against the tree. You aren't going to try. Not tonight.


	5. Fornicating

Electric panic zaps over your skin; you jolt awake.

It’s pitch dark. All you can make out is the outline of trees against the midnight sky. There is no moon, no stars, and cold rain plinks over your swollen face. Drops tap on leaves, trickle over rich-smelling soil, soak into silence. Your clothes are still damp from the lake, and they cling to your shivering body.

You don’t know what woke you.

No matter how long you stare into the darkness, your eyes never focus, never find light. Slowly, you sit up from the dirt, and every motion hurts. The worst is your head, which feels stuffed with blood-soaked cotton, and your throat, which is so dry that it’s almost scratching itself. The only thing you’ve swallowed in the last twenty-four hours is ink and lake water.

Maybe some rain has gathered in the flowers… Wearily, you feel over the ground. Your fingers brush over rain-kissed petals. Slowly, gingerly, you lower your head and sip the few droplets it allows you.

This alone saps your energy, and you roll onto your side, eyes fluttering shut –

“Hi, Happy!”

“Nfh! Bendy?” the word degenerates into a coughing fit.

“That’s my name, don’t wear it out.” Then he’s suddenly there, only the white of his face standing out from the darkness. “I’m bored.”

You immediately don’t like this. You don’t like anything about it.

“Play with me.”

“Please, no.” Even talking is too much work. So is fear, but it still thrums through you anyway. “People die without sleep,” you tell him raspily, and pray it earns you something.

“I know that. Don’t complain you’re all sleep-deprived, ‘cause you just slept for an entire hour, maybe even two.”

“I need more.”

“Noo, you _want_ more. You don’t _need_ more.” He says it with a certain amount of confidence, but he’s looking at you like he’s not quite sure. Groggily, you remember him mentioning they’ve never kept a Snufkin before, and that he doesn’t know anything about their sleeping habits.

“I do need more,” you try weakly.

He tilts his head to the side. “How long’s it take until ya die?”

“Two or three days.” It’s not remotely the truth. You’re scrambling to construct some narrative that will both earn you more hours to sleep and be believable, but your head’s in a fog and you didn’t have any time to prepare beforehand.

“The animators could go several days without sleeping.” Bendy sounds suspicious. “They didn’t die.”

You have no idea what an animator is, but you latch onto the idea. “Some species can. Snufkins can’t.”

“Oh.”

There’s a silence long enough to make you uncomfortable, less because silence unsettles you, and more because Bendy’s never quiet that long.

“We need a few hours every night-“ you start, and then begin coughing again. They’re dry, hoarse coughs that leave your chest aching.

Bendy looks worried. “Ah, hang on-“ and then he’s gone again.

You’re already dozing by the time he returns, but he jams a full canteen against your lips and you wake. There’s no point in complaining – you chug down the water as it tastes like the sweetest, coolest spring water you’ve ever drank. Once it’s empty, you slump against the tree trunk, gasping in relief. Your eyes slide shut.

 

 

Something wraps around your chest, and the ground swoops away from you. You jerk awake, as one does from dreams where they are suddenly falling, and find you’re being carried over absolute darkness.

“L-let me go!” you twist, writhe, kick. Your fingers carve through a thick liquid around your chest, your feet catch on the same molasses-like substance. _Oh._ “Bendy, let me go!”

He dumps you unceremoniously onto the ground. You sit up, heart pounding. Everything is dark and you have no idea where you are. Bendy’s gone.

You stand on shaking legs. Your eyes are round, flicking left and right as if something might take shape from the darkness, as if eventually your sight will adjust – but it doesn’t.

“Bendy?” No response. Nothing. The insects chirp on. Distantly, a bullfrog groans.

Is he just going to leave you out here? … Can you run away?

You spin in place. A gust of chilly wind rustles the trees.

Okay. Your heart thunders. This is a game of some kind. He wouldn’t just let you go. But how well can he even navigate out here? The Joxter said he had poor senses, right? Then your mind stumbles over itself, _but what if he was lying? What if this was set up? What if he told you that, knowing this was going to happen, and –_

You stop that thought as soon as you can. Panicking won’t help.

You don’t know if Bendy’s anywhere near you. If he dropped you and left, or if he’s hovering somewhere nearby. Rain drizzles down. It makes your skin jump to think of him waiting in the darkness, so so very close but invisible.

But you can’t just stand here. You can’t wait for him to decide to attack. So you take one tremulous step, rolling your foot to muffle the sound. Your heart skips. There’s no response. No change.

This is what you know. Sneaking in the darkness, in the woods, ducking away from Hemulens, flitting through the trees like a silent wraith, or a small beast of the forest. This is what you _are_.

You don’t dare to hope. You wish very much you could take off your shoes, to let your paws feel the ground, seek the best route – but any extra movement is a risk.

But you take another step, and it’s equally silent. You’re tense, listening hard. Nothing, nothing but the noises of the forest at night.

Part of you doesn’t believe you can possibly be so lucky. Part of you thinks you’re dreaming. In fact, almost no conscious bit of you thinks that you can really escape, but nonetheless your heart is thumping and your blood is racing and your legs are twitching to run.

It takes an extraordinary amount of self-control to take just one more meditated step, and as your body vibrates with nerves, you want to scream with the need to flee. But you walk. You slink, like a creature of the forest. And you are silent.

You dare to breathe. You feel your way through the trees, which are looming and black and unseeable. Bushes tickle your calves; thorns snag them.

Then one foot strikes a puddle in the ground. Instantly, you’re running – moss and flowers and leaves are crushed underfoot, mud sprays, you slip, but you keep running, terror thrumming through your abused body.

You don’t make it far.

Something wraps around your ankle, and one sharp yank sends you hard to the ground. There’s a deep, animalistic growl that makes you understand immediately what it feels like to be prey. You twist around, and bone white teeth appear from the darkness. The noise that comes out of your mouth is humiliating, something between a squeal and a scream.

His head lowers, jaws part.

You’re going to die. Suddenly, you’re laughing, a high-pitched, gasping laugh. A few futile protests slip in hoarsely, but they do nothing.

Bendy lunges at you – the air rips from your lungs in terror - his teeth snap down -

Silence.

Something gasps in a rapid staccato beat.

It’s your own breathing, you realize, only after noticing your diaphragm is jolting at the same frenetic pace.

But that means you’re still alive.

Your eyes open. His teeth are an inch from your face. You hiccup, start crying, and then you’re laughing hard enough to hurt.

Ink melts into your lap; hands cradle your cheeks. “Aw, Happy, Happy, Happy. Ya didn’t like my game? I wasn’t gonna eat you, silly. Not until the Joxter says so.”

“I-I w’hnn’” You get stuck there, lips trembling.

“You really need to learn how to articulate better, Happy. Nobody can understand you like that.”

“ _P-papa_ ,” you whimper.

“There’s something really wrong in your head if you think _I’m_ your dad.”

No, no, no – you squeeze your eyes shut and hot tears flow down your face.

“Oh, I get it! You want to see your dad, huh? Oh, but he’s not going to want to see you. Nobody wants used goods, Happy. Well, except me an’ the Joxter, I guess.”

You don’t have any answer. For a second, for such a brief moment, you thought you were free.

Bendy makes a soft noise. His arms loop around your neck and he nuzzles your cheek. “Hey, relax. We’ll take care of you. And if we’re lucky, maybe your father will wanna give ya one good screw before he totally ditches you. I’ve never seen two Joxters share a Snufkin, but it sounds fun, doesn’t it?”

 

 

 

You jerk awake. You’re back in the clearing, surrounded by waving white flowers. Warm midmorning light filters through the tree branches, and you most certainly did not get enough sleep, because Bendy had kept you up most of the night again. 

But the Joxter is kneeling in front of you, and nudging your thighs apart. “Oh, hullo,” he says, meeting your gaze. “You needn’t wake up on my behalf.”

Everything in you goes cold, because he’s got his pants unbuttoned and your own pair is completely discarded off to the side.

“Joxter, no-“

“No need for the formality, love. You can call me papa, it’s okay.”

“No!” Your legs kick out instinctively; one catches the Joxter’s hip, then you’re scrambling backwards.

“So troublesome.” He reaches to pull you back – the sole of your boot strikes his arm, and he releases with a very bad-tempered look. Before you know it, you’re on your feet and running.

“Bendy,” the Joxter sighs. “Would you mind?”

There’s a loud thump behind you, cantering foot falls, then you hit the dirt hard.

“Haven’t you learned not to run by now?” The Joxter asks as Bendy drags you back. “Do you really think it’s going to work?”

You’re flipped onto your back, then ink scrawls over your wrists and ankles, and advances in tendrils up your arms, shoulders, throat, slithering into the little hairs at the base of your neck. “If you weren’t so troublesome, we wouldn’t have to force you,” the Joxter adds.

You lash your head from side to side, trying to shake off the black viscous solution as it creeps over your temples. Your efforts prove entirely futile. The ink tickles at the edges of your eyelashes, then pools and seals over the eyes that you quickly squeeze shut.

From feet to head, you are almost completely bound.

Time must have then skipped, because next you hear the Joxter in the middle of sentence you don’t remember him starting, “what a seizure is, darling.”

“Is he okay, though?”

“He’s being dramatic. Nothing to worry about.” Belatedly, you notice the sound of slapping flesh, and there’s thick pressure between your whorishly splayed legs. The Joxter had gotten started.

“I’ve never seen someone laugh and drool at the same time.” Something slick and chilly licks along your lips.

“It’s kind of you to clean it up for him.”

Bendy doesn’t reply, probably because his tongue is busy being shoved down your throat.

The Joxter’s breath stutters as he changes angles. “He’s just heavenly. Snug and warm around me.”

“They all feel the same to me.”

“There’s a subtlety. Ah- mh.” Each thrust punches a gasp from your lungs. The Joxter sounds breathless, “if you didn’t – tear them apart – every time – mh - you would see. ”

“Hhm.”

The Joxter’s fingers dig into your thighs. A soft, pleased noise rumbles from his chest. He spends a moment pressed close to you, warm and sweaty, and hairs tickle your crotch. All of this happens around you, _to_ you, without being entirely real.

Then, the pressure slides out. Ink retreats from your eyes and your body, and your vision is returned to you. You sit up. It all feels very casual. Very impossible. Dream-like. The Joxter neatly tucks himself back into his pants.

Bendy’s looking between your legs with something close to curiosity. Without any conscious emotion or reaction, you close your thighs.

The Joxter makes a quiet, intrigued noise. “Did you want seconds, darling?”

“I’d have to be gentle,” Bendy replies, hesitant.

“I’m sure that’s manageable.” The Joxter plops down heavily beside you; he loops his arm around one of your knees and wrenches it to the side. “No spikes, of course.”

Weakly, you try to jerk your leg free, but the Joxter is much stronger than your starved, exhausted body.

“I’ve never done it without the spikes,” Bendy responds.

“Never?”

“Not with a Snufkin.”

“Spikes?” you echo, looking between the two of them. There should probably be some emotional investment, but instead you ask this in a distant, fuzzy sort of way.

The Joxter gives you an awful, awful smile, but doesn’t answer the question. His free arm slings over your shoulder, and he places a chaste kiss on your cheek. That’s okay. That’s happening now.

Bendy settles in the offered space between your legs, his tongue sticking out from his teeth in concentration.

“Isn’t it exciting?” The Joxter tucks a loose hair behind your ear. “Bendy’s a shape-shifter, love, so he can have whatever he wants down there.”

Oh. Of course. That made sense. That made perfect sense. “No,” you say, quite calmly, and your hands instinctively move to push the demon away.

“Don’t be that way,” the Joxter scolds, folding his fists over yours and wrestling them against your chest. “You let me have my turn, and now it’s his. Sharing is important, dear.”

“I don’t want either of you.”

Bendy puts one hand to the side of his mouth and whispers, “ _that’s kinda why we didn’t ask._ ”

Your hands twist free from the Joxter’s, and go right back to pushing Bendy off.

“All right, jeez, that’s enough-“ in the next second, you find your wrists secured to the ground with coils of ink. That’s fine. That’s totally fine.

It’s with heavy disappointment that the Joxter murmurs, “such a difficult Snufkin. Just relax.” He pulls you into a kiss, so you don’t see exactly what happens next, but you do _feel_ it.

“What is that-“ you stutter against the Joxter’s lips.

“Something gentler than what he usually does,” the Joxter’s fingers tighten in your hair, “you ought to be grateful.”

“Something more boring,” Bendy grumbles, and then he’s inside you. It’s not painful. But it’s _there_ , and you can feel it, and you don’t want it.

“Go on, thank him for the effort, hmm? He didn’t _have_ to be gentle.”

You let out a shaky breath. Just endure. Just sit and endure until it’s over and then…

Then what?

“I don’t think I’m doin’ this right,” Bendy complains.

“You’re doing just fine.”

“You’re not even looking.”

“Mh?” The Joxter tears his gaze from your eyes, “just keep that rhythm up.”

A sound escapes your throat, one that catches the Joxter’s attention. “Do you _enjoy_ that?” he’s morbidly delighted.

 _Do you?_ Everything down there is slick, too slick, and a touch sore if you think about it, but you’d rather not think about it – yet there is another sensation, one that mostly burns but isn’t all terrible.

Disgust surges; you try to scramble back but there’s nowhere to go and your wrists snag. Right. Okay. Your breathing levels out, then jumps again.

“You _do_ ,” purrs the Joxter. “How depraved, Happy. If only your father could see you now, hmm?”

This is all wrong. You're not supposed to like it. And you don’t, not really; you're horrified and disgusted and repulsed and scared. But you aren’t only that.

“Is he seriously having more fun than I am?” Bendy whines.

“Ah.” The Joxter sounds sympathetic, “still not doing it for you?”

“No.” Bendy’s tail lashes. “I told you this was boring.”

“It’s doing it for Happy,” The Joxter apparently can’t resist replying.

“Good for him.” Bendy shoves up your overcoat to your chest; his head dips down to nuzzle your pale, thin stomach. You suck your breath in. It hazards near ticklish. With a few more loose, slow thrusts, and the tip of his bifurcated tongue grazing over your belly, you clench your fists. Nails dig into the wounds across your palms. This shouldn’t feel good. You shouldn’t like any part of this. 

Then he bites. _Hard_.

You shriek and recoil, but quickly realize that’s a mistake as soon his teeth catch on your flinching skin, and blood bubbles down your abdomen.

The Joxter sits up straight, tense, “Bendy-“

Another bite follows the first, and then another – each clenching wetly through your skin, he’s almost _chewing_ -

You scream words that don’t make sense, until abruptly some do: “Joxter, help me -  _get-him-off_!”

“Papa,” he corrects as if on autopilot; he’s watching with a conflicted mix of alarm and pleasure.

Bendy’s fingers join his teeth – except, by the feel of them, they’re not so much fingertips now as they are claws, and he digs them into your flayed flesh, and nuzzles his head to your skin, very much like he wants to burrow inside.

“ _Papa_!”

The Joxter snaps his attention back to you. With only a second’s hesitation, he unknots your scarf and wraps it around your throat like a noose.

“This should help,” he says.

Then, you can’t breathe. The next moments are ugly, undignified. You have the displeasure of staying coherent for all of it, with your body convulsing stupidly and your eyes bulging. Your brain feels hot, swollen with blood, and you’re certain it’s pushing against the insides of your skull.

There’s nothing you can do, nothing at all. Only distantly do you feel claws popping into the flesh of your hips, and a tongue lapping at your bloodied, minced stomach.

Your vision begins to spot. The sounds of the forest are sucked down into a tiny muffled tube.

You… feel nothing. Numb.

Only then does the Joxter release the pressure on your throat. You launch into a fit, where you make short squeaking inhales and violent, coughing exhales. Sensation returns, but you wish it didn’t.

The warmth of the Joxter disappears from your side.

Your lungs heave as the world comes back into focus. Bendy’s sitting on your lap licking blood from his hands and looking pleased as ever; whatever he’d used to violate you is gone.

The Joxter appears again, with a collection of supplies in his arms. “That’s a lot of blood,” he says tersely.

“Yeah,” Bendy purrs. The expression on his face makes you want to vomit, if you weren't so desperately sipping in air. 

“He could die," the Joxter emphasizes. 

“ _Oh_.” The demon scrambles off your lap, and the Joxter swiftly takes his place. 

“I would advise sitting still,” the Joxter tells you. From his supplies, he draws out thread and a glinting silver needle.

 


	6. Entertaining

The Joxter does all the stitches with you awake and coherent. When your thrashing proves to be too much, Bendy ensures you remain still. At some point, you stop feeling it. At some point, you stop remembering it, and that’s all for the better.

Then, you sleep. Your dreams are feverish and swamped by miasmatic pain; often, you have no body, and no form: it’s simply the sensation of pain, the idea of pain, detached from any traditional sense of the word. Then you’re too hot. You do have a body, and it’s _burning_. You snap awake, convinced that the Joxter has tossed you into the fire.

“Aren’t you hungry?” the Joxter coos. The trees spin, the fire licks at your flesh. Your stomach is ripped open, you’re certain, and your guts spilling into the embers.

A cool soft surface is pressed to your lips.

“No-“ you protest.

“It’s an apple, love.”

You jerk awake again. It is an apple. The trees aren’t spinning anymore, and there’s no fire. But it feels like there’s one, turning your stomach into tender roasted meat. The Joxter smiles wanly. Cold sweat stands out against your skin. You’re shivering, though it’s the middle of the day.

“You’re sick,” he murmurs to you softly. “Poor dear. I’m afraid we were a bit negligent.”

He presses the apple to your lips again. You’re starving. And you hate it. It’s humiliating. But through nausea, you eat from his hands. It’s cool, soothing. Juice dribbles down your chin.

“Such a mess,” the Joxter wipes away the trail.

At some point, you start crying. Silently, expressionlessly. But you eat the entire apple, and when you’re done, he kisses you. It tastes like stale tobacco and filmy sour spit.

Soon you fall asleep again. And wake. Sleep, wake. Both states wriggle away from reality, both states are riddled with terrors, some which are real, some which are not. You imagine your father: sometimes, he cradles you and calms you the way he would when you were younger. Most of the time, he holds you down and tears into you. Then, less often, you wake up and find the Joxter is doing exactly what you had been imagining.

Intermittently, you find water held to your mouth, or various fruits, nuts, and berries. You accept these quietly, with no fight; too tired, too hungry, too thirsty to do otherwise.

Once, you jerk awake from another hallucination in which your insides are being gouged out (these are common), to find Bendy kneeling at your side, patting a wet washcloth over your thin, exposed stomach. It looks like someone took a pen and scribbled viciously, pointlessly all over your skin. Red welts flare outward in all directions, and almost every one is deep enough to merit the black stitching holding your flesh shut like teeth.

“D-don’t-“ you blubber weakly.

“I’m helping,” he tells you. Then, “Uh, Jox?”

“Mh?”

“Did you say don’t wipe the stitches, or do wipe the stitches?”

“Don’t. Wash around them. Gently.”

“Oh.”

You hear the Joxter sigh from his canoe. “Were you-?”

“I was totally doing it the right way. Just want to make that clear.” Then, to himself, he whispers, “ _gently_. _Around the stitches_.”

 

 

You’re not sure how long it is before you wake up and suddenly feel more alert, like a living thing rather than a sluggish object. Your cheek rises from the dirt, and you look around. It’s a cloudy, overcast day, and you can’t tell what time it is. There’s no sign of Bendy around, but the green lump nestled in the canoe suggests the Joxter is napping. _Escape_ is the first thought that bizarrely plants itself in your head. It doesn’t initially seem like a bad idea. You can feel the pull in your chest that urges _run, run now!_

But you hesitate, because the Joxter said he could follow your scent across miles, and because you don’t actually know where Bendy is, which means he could be very close. _But_ , a thought flits in, _it could mean he’s very far away._ That still left the scent problem, but if you moved fast enough… if you crossed streams and creeks…

After everything you've been through, everything you've suffered, escape seems like such a nebulous concept. Can you possibly return to your peaceful meanderings, enjoying each moment as it arrives? The thought of doing that feels impossible. But so too does the thought of staying here for even one second more.

In a heartbeat, you decide. You move to stand up, and pain explodes across your stomach. Groaning, you end up half curled on the ground, letting out pained whimpers like a child.

You don’t want to see. You don’t want to know how much more awful it’s gotten. If the stitches tore or ripped open, if it’s swollen and infected, if maggots are eating you alive. But you have to know.

Once the pain ebbs enough, you lift your overcoat with trembling hands.

And it’s… you blink in surprise. Almost all the redness is gone. Your skin is smooth and pale, apart from the roadmap of raised ridges and the train tracks of stitches running over them. Any relief that it’s not infected is drowned out by the sheer horror of your stomach looking like macabre topography. You fully grasp the idea, then, that if Bendy doesn’t kill you on purpose, he absolutely can and will by accident. He doesn’t have the first idea about how to keep a person alive, and the Joxter has no real power to stop him.

“Ooh, that looks bad.”

“Nh!” You hate the animalistic terror that sends you cringing against the tree trunk.

“Relax,” Bendy grumbles. You don’t know how he got in front of you so fast. “I brought ya food. A simple thanks would be nice.” He tosses something your way: you flinch. It thuds next to you, and rolls a bit. It’s a pear. Your gaze flicks back to him. You don’t dare reach for it. It’s a trick, a game. He likes those.

“I’m not going to hurt ya. The Joxter said you got sick-“ he makes air quotations around the word, “so I need to take it easier.”

Still, you don’t move.

Bendy’s tail lashes. “Seriously, pick it up.”

You’re not interested in getting on his bad side. Your hand shoots out and grabs the fruit, but you cradle it to your chest and keep your eyes fixed on the demon rather than eating it.

He laughs. “Look, I’m trying to help ya. Not my fault if ya don’t eat.”

This said, he dismisses you in favor of climbing up a tree and perching in the branches, watching from above very much as if thinking about the best way to devour you.

Any energy that you had woken with is gone. You don’t want to do anything. You don’t want to be anything. You eat the pear, feeling numb. Frightened. Stalked. Escape, you decide, is not such a good thing to try.

 

 

“Snufkin!” a high-pitched voice declares, and arms wrap around your midsection.

Immediately your eyes snap open and every fiber of your being is tensely waiting for more pain. You look down. There’s a strange small white hippo creature hugging you and nuzzling his face to your chest. You, meanwhile, can’t breathe, because he’s nuzzling right above the vicious patchwork of stitches over your belly and nothing says he’s not going to rip into your chest to complete the picture.

“Oh Snufkin, I was so worried! I knew the papers just couldn’t be true, but then I couldn’t find you and I didn’t know what to think, or where to go-“

Maybe it’s not pain he wants. Maybe he wants use you.

He looks up, and meets your eyes. “Oh! Oh gosh!” He falls off your lap and lands on his butt. “You’re not Snufkin!”

“I’m a Snufkin,” you say robotically, knowing fully well what that can mean. But you don’t think you can pretend you’re anything else. Would he have believed you’re a Joxter? That’s a safer thing to be.

His face falls. “Oh. You look so much like Snufkin. Have you seen him around anywhere?”

You don’t want to talk, but you understand it’s not really up to you. So you shake your head, and wait for him to decide that you’re worth settling for, even if he prefers a different Snufkin.

“Oh, drat.” The thing grabs his tail and wrings it anxiously. “I just can’t find him anywhere! He can’t have disappeared, he just can’t have!”

Wait. A strange thought trickles in. He seems concerned about this other Snufkin. It could just be a concern of a fun toy missing, but it doesn’t seem that way, not with the tears appearing at the corners of his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” you manage to muster, “why is it you want to find this Snufkin?”

“Well, he’s my friend!” the creature practically wails. “And he’s the best sort of person – you’d know if you met him – he plays the loveliest music, and he sings, if you’re lucky, and he’s got just the gentlest nature, he’d never hurt a fly-“ The tears are flowing in earnest now. You’re not sure how to react. “B-but, one day his tent was empty, an’ he wasn’t around anywhere, and I thought he’d left Moominvalley, but it’s not winter, and –“ the creature clutches its ears, expression distraught. “Oh, gosh, what if something awful happened?”

Hold on. He’s _friends_ with a Snufkin. And he doesn’t want to hurt you. He’s not like the Joxter or Bendy, then.

But how do you talk to people who don’t want to hurt you? What do you say? What do you do? You’re paralyzed, struck by a desperate sense that you need to be saying _something_ , and yet you have no idea what it is. “ _Help me_ ,” you finally gasp out involuntarily.

“H-huh?”

No. Stop. That won’t work. This creature is gentle, small, unassuming. How could he possibly help? If you escaped with him, then inevitably the Joxter would hunt you down and Bendy would kill you both. This individual can’t save you, and you can only bring him trouble. “Run,” you say instead. You don’t know who he is. You don’t even really care for him. But you don’t want to see him destroyed.

“Whu-?”

“ _Run!_ Before they come back!”

“They?” He’s puzzled and frightened, but not frightened enough, and he’s not moving.

“The Joxter and Bendy, just –“

“The Joxter’s here?”’ he, horribly, looks hopeful. “Maybe he knows where Snufkin’s gone!”

“No! You don’t understand, he’ll hurt you, he’s-”

“Where Snufkin has gone?” another voice interrupts, drawling and sinister. The Joxter steps into the clearing, his head tilted slightly to the side. He’s holding an armful of wild carrots and potatoes. Bendy follows, clutching the ears of two dead rabbits, whose bodies drag behind him.

“Mr. Joxter!” the creature leaps up, and runs over – your entire body tenses. He’s going to get killed. He’s going to get ripped limb from limb, and you’re going to have to watch it, _hear_ it. Shudders start running up and down your spine.

The Joxter smiles vacantly. “Alas, not the one you know, I’m afraid. I don’t think we’ve had the pleasure of meeting before.”

“Oh, why, I’m Moomin-“

“Should I-?” Bendy interjects, glancing between Moomin and the Joxter.

“No,” the Joxter says quickly. “He’s a Moomin.”

“You haven’t told me about Moomins.”

“They’re not like Snufkins.”

“Oh. Nice to meet ya, Moomin.”

Moomin looks puzzled at the exchange, but dismisses it too quickly, “Nice to meet you too… uh?”

You’re astonished at the Joxter’s friendly, polite nonchalance. “His name is Bendy. I’m the Joxter, of course, and that’s Happy over there. Did I hear that you’re looking for a Snufkin?”

“Oh, yes sir. He’s a very good friend of mine.”

“They’re such a fickle lot, aren’t they?” The Joxter tsks, “I suppose this one went missing?”

“Well, yes, but he wouldn’t ever leave in summer like this! It’s not like him at all, not one bit.”

The Joxter wanders to the campfire’s stone circle, and deposits the carrots and rice on the ground. Moomin trots after him, none the wiser, and Bendy follows. There’s no killing, no maiming. All of it is so casual, so normal. You’re in disbelief. You’re consumed with horror. Any second, something will snap, and Moomin is not going to survive.

“You never know with Snufkins,” the Joxter comments thoughtfully, clearing out charred logs from the circle and replacing them with new, fresh ones. “They come and go as they please, not tied down to anything.”

“This Snufkin is different! He wouldn’t just leave when we had so much still to do!”

“Oh? Perhaps something happened to him?” The Joxter remarks, sparking a fire into life with flint and steel.

“No.” Moomin looks away. “I don’t know. I’m so worried about him, Mr. Joxter. The papers said a wild animal attacked him at the zoo, but that just can’t be right! Snufkin knows all about animals: he’d never let that happen.”

“No, I imagine not-“ the Joxter starts, but Bendy interrupts,

“Did you say the zoo?”

“Well, yes, I did.” Moomin wrings his tail between his hands. “Did you hear about it?”

Bendy makes a snort of a laugh, that he quickly tries to turn to a cough halfway through.

“We haven’t,” the Joxter says over the noise.

His expression appropriately arranged, Bendy continues, “Tell ya what, though, if you give us some more details about what happened, maybe it’ll help us keep an eye out for him.”

You understand, then. You understand, and you feel ill. “He killed him,” you breathe. It’s sickening how they pretend.

Moomin glances your way. “Huh?”

All three of them are looking at you. You shrink back against the tree.

“Speak up, love,” The Joxter urges. “Did you have something to say?”

Your heart pounds. Fine. Your finger shakily points at Bendy. “He killed your friend. It’s what he _does_. It’s what they _both_ do.”

Moomin, confused, swerves his eyes between you and the demon that barely reaches two feet tall. “Uhhh?”

Oh. You scramble to elaborate, “N-no, not in that form – I know he looks harmless, but he can transform into a monster! He eats Snufkins!”

“That’s enough,” the Joxter scolds lightly. “Please pay him no mind, Moomin. Happy is… not quite right in the head, you see. That’s why we look after him. A danger to himself and others, I’m afraid.”

Rage rails against your chest. “That’s not true,” you protest, weaker, “They’re keeping me here, they torture me- you need to get away-“

“I apologize,” The Joxter adds, looking pained. “He has a very disturbed imagination. Happy, please stop telling frightening tales. We talked about this, dear.”

Moomin gazes at you with a deep, pitying look, and you burn with rage. “I’m not lying!” You get to your feet, and sway, dizzy with vertigo.

“Ohh, no, he got himself worked up. Bendy, would you be a dear?”

The ink demon bounds over to you, and places one hand gently on your stomach. Right over the wounds he had made. “Come on, Happy, it’s okay. You’re safe. There’s no monsters here, remember?” he smiles up at you. His fingers ever so lightly dig into the injuries hidden beneath your overcoat.

Your breath catches in your throat.

“I deeply apologize,” the Joxter is telling Moomin in the background. “Meeting strangers can upset him, you see. It’s a frightening experience. Please forgive him; he can’t help it.”

Moomin replies, “Gosh, I think I really scared him earlier, then. I thought he was my Snufkin, so I just up and hugged him!”

“Sit back down,” Bendy whispers to you, in a voice that barely reaches your ears. “Or I’ll hurt ya.” He hasn’t stopped smiling; unconsciously, you return the expression. Your legs collapse beneath you.

“Are they looking?” Bendy asks in the same low tone.

 _What_? Your eyes flick to the Joxter and Moomin. They’re busy talking, not paying attention to you. You don’t answer, but Bendy seems to guess based on your expression.

“Don’t make any noise, okay?” He grabs your hair and kisses you hard. It lasts only a second or two, and then he pulls away with a ridiculous, giddy grin. “Your face looks stupid,” he tells you gleefully, and trots back to the others.

You resist the sudden, nearly overwhelming urge to cry. You've cried enough.

The Joxter is now sitting beside the fire, his overcoat fluffed out, and he’s cutting the stems and leaves off the carrots. You catch the rest of his words, “- does no good to run yourself into the ground looking. Why don’t you stay for a bit, and share some stew with us? There’s plenty for all, I’m sure.”

“I’d love to stay, Mr. Joxter. I am very hungry. I’ve been looking for Snufkin all day.”

“You must care for him very deeply.”

“I do. I go out every day to find him, but I haven’t seen even a hint of him…”

“Well, we’ll keep an eye out.” The carrots finished, he begins to skin the rabbits.

You watch in mute bewilderment as the Joxter little by little prepares and cooks the stew, all while chatting with Moomin and Bendy. At one point, Moomin relates everything he knows about Snufkin’s disappearance (which is very little), and Bendy avidly listens while the Joxter stirs the pot.

“Are ya sure there’s no other details?” Bendy asks. “If you’re gonna investigate a disappearance, you gotta know all the facts. Every little one.”

“Mm.” Moomin glances away. “I went to the Zookeeper, because he’s the one that reported it. But he was very reserved. He didn’t tell me anything else.”

“Ooh, that’s a real pity. I bet his perspective would have been helpful.”

“Y-you don’t think he’s really hurt, do you?”

“Of course not. You said your friend knows his way around animals, and I believe it. I’m sure the Zookeeper just saw something else, and was mistaken about what was really happening.”

“This should be ready,” the Joxter announces, and fetches four small wooden bowls. Returning, he dollops stew into two bowls; one he hands to Moomin, the other he places at his side. He gives Bendy the third bowl to chew on, and the fourth he fills.

“Come along, Happy. Don’t you want some stew?”

Hunger curls traitorously in your stomach. You don’t think you have a choice, anyway. So you rise mutely and join them by the fire, between the Joxter and Moomin.

The Joxter pushes the bowl into your hands. “Eat up, dear.”

And you do. It doesn’t taste like anything, or if it does you can’t tell. You’re too high-strung to notice or care. Conversation flows around you, and you hear it, but barely listen.

“Say, have you seen the lake this year? The one just that way?” The Joxter asks Moomin.

“Huh? No, I haven’t been over there since last spring.”

“You must go.” The Joxter pops a carrot slice into his mouth. “It’s just beautiful this year.”

“I don’t know if anything will seem beautiful until I find Snufkin.”

“Then the conclusion is obvious. You must take him with you when you go.” The Joxter gives Moomin a reassuring smile. “You’ll find him.”

“Thanks, Mr. Joxter.” Moomin looks a little more comforted as he sips his soup. “This is a nice area you have. I didn’t have any idea you were out here!”

“Oh, well, we moved in not long ago. Bendy, when was it?”

“I dunno?”

The Joxter continues unruffled, “maybe two months. Enough time to settle in. I myself am from further north. But I’ve found Moominvalley much to my liking.”

“Oh, it’s a wonderful place,” Moomin nods. “There’s all kinds of things to do! If you haven’t been to the ocean, you gotta see it!”

“Mm, I haven’t.” The Joxter glances thoughtfully at you; you shiver under his pale eyes, and dread to imagine what he’s thinking. “Perhaps we’ll make a visit sometime. The ocean air would do Happy good, I think.”

“Oh, yes.” Moomin turns to you. “The ocean is a lot of fun.” He drawls it out real slow like you might not be able to comprehend him otherwise.

“Why are we talking about the ocean?” you mutter.

“Why, because it sounds lovely,” the Joxter answers.

Is it selfish to be thinking about everything that happened to you? It can’t be. It’s them that are abnormal, acting so casual when the Joxter had repeatedly violated you, and when you stay here only by threat of a violent death. This can’t be normal. This can’t be so _relaxed_.

Your fingers tighten around the bowl of soup. You stare into the clear water, with soggy bits of carrot, rabbit, and potato bobbing.

The conversation moves on. The very same voices that taunt you, mock you, and humiliate you, are now nonchalantly discussing the different shell types that one might find at the ocean.

Phantom feelings drift over your skin; ink winding around your wrists, and the Joxter’s hands nudging your thighs apart. With a half-scream, you throw your soup bowl – the contents spray over the ground and the bowl bounces to a halt.

All talking ceases. Moomin looks alarmed.

“It’s all right,” The Joxter touches Moomin’s shoulder gently. “He does that sometimes.”

You rub your wrists to chase off the sensation; an involuntary smiles spreads wide across your lips but you've never felt less happy. They’re going to do _something_ , it’s just a matter of time. They’re going to make him feel just as awful as you feel. “Why aren’t you killing him?” you ask desperately. Not that you want them to; you really _don’t_ want them to, but this waiting, this anticipation –

“Happy!” The Joxter gasps.

“Whoa,” Bendy raises his hands, palms open, “ya don’t hafta get so morbid, Happy. We’re just trying to talk.”

“That’s going much too far,” the Joxter agrees. “Moomim, I’m very very sorry for his behavior….”

“Boy, he scares me sometimes,” Bendy admits, “Don’t know what’s goin’ on in his head.”

“Alas, he’s very disturbed,” the Joxter seconds, with great heaviness.

You grit your teeth. You hate them. You hate them more than you've ever hated anything.

The Joxter smiles condescendingly at you. “Go on, love, why don’t you go wait in your canoe? You may be calmer there.”

The last thing you are going to do is go into the Joxter’s nest.

“You try to give him everything and he just doesn’t want it,” you hear the Joxter sigh as you retreat to the tree they had first tied you to.

After that, you tune them out. You don’t want to hear. You want to run, more than anything, but you have no illusion about how that will end up for you.

The fire crackles and gradually dies to glowing embers. The Joxter stacks the empty bowls and sets them aside for washing later. Still the three of them talk. And then just the two, when Bendy sprawls over Moomin’s lap and purrs while Moomin pets him.

Nothing about the scene looks inherently frightening or dangerous. The contrast jars you. It’s not right. They shouldn’t be able to look so unassuming, so innocent. Especially not right on the heels of the things they had done to you. Not while your stomach is still stuffed with stitches, and you ache between your legs. But you can’t do anything. You can’t run away, and you can’t warn Moomin off. He might die at the end of this whole facsimile of a domestic scene, and you have no power over that. You have no ability to stop it. So you put your head between your knees, breathe, and dread.

After that, it isn’t too long before Moomin stands, and says he needs to return home, that his father will be missing him. Your heart clenches.

The Joxter wishes him well, and adds, “I do hope you’ll find your Snufkin, you know.”

Just like that, they wave him off, and Moomin trots away, unmarked, unscarred, undisturbed. They didn't do a single thing to him. 

The Joxter sighs, watching him disappear into the trees. “Moomins are such terrible conversationalists. They have so much to say, and not one bit of it interesting.”

“Aw, I liked him,” Bendy replies.

They really aren't going to chase him down, are they?

“You do the same thing.”

“I do not.”

The Joxter gathers the empty bowls, and offers a “hum,” as a way of response. You don't understand. Why didn't they attack him?

“I do not!” Bendy repeats. As the two of them depart towards the creek, you hear their voices fade, debating light-heartedly over the subject.

Evidently, they feel comfortable enough to leave you alone and unsupervised. For a brief, surreal moment, you wonder if they’re actually keeping you hostage. If you don’t actually _want_ to be here, on some level, because if you didn’t, wouldn’t you have made it out by now? If you were really captive, why would they have just had this whole meal with you, and invited someone else along, when you haven’t even been tied up in days? The thought temporarily paralyzes you. For a second, you sit, and do nothing, feel helpless.

Then energy jolts under your skin. You need to get out. You need to do something. You may not be able to run, but… Your eyes flit to the packs the Joxter has around his canoe.

There’s no time to debate or reconsider. In a flash you’re across the clearing, blinking away spots in your vision, and your paws are digging around in the packs, past canteens and snacks and rope and –

Your fingers close around a knife. Your breath jolts. Feeling like electricity is shocking at your feet, you shoot back to the tree. Your numb fingers dig a hole into the dirt, like a tiny pocket-knife sized grave, and you bury it there.

You sit back down, breathless. If an opportunity ever arises….

It gives you hope. Excitement. It’s not a guarantee, but it’s something, and it’s more than you had before.


	7. Bonding

A fleshy slapping noise fills the clearing. The Joxter had woken up needy. You were available. It’s as simple as that. Bendy’s perched in a nearby tree, watching the festivities.

You suppose you’re being boring, because you aren’t fighting back. In fact, you're not really doing or saying anything at all. The compliance is all part of one long con that ends with you getting out of here. That’s what you try to tell yourself. Except you don’t have any kind of plan, least of all one that involves you cooperating with them. The only hope you can latch on to is the one stolen knife, but you're having a real hard time right now imagining that that will make any difference whatsoever. The truth is you're not doing anything because you don't believe you _can_.

The Joxter isn't deterred by your lack of response. His gloved hands roam and knead over your skin.  It's not unlike someone admiring a piece of meat - appreciating it for its qualities, without thinking of it as a sentient thing - no need, even, to think of it as a thing that was _once_ sentient. His sour breath huffs over your cheek. Your guts feel like they’re twisting, and it’s not all painful. You don't know exactly what makes this different than all the other times with him, but it very definitely is, and you don't like it - that ugly burning pleasure is back.

“Hey, he’s making that moany noise again,” Bendy remarks.

The Joxter rumbles his approval. If his objective was to make some part of you enjoy it against your will, then he's succeeding.  The harder you try to think about escape, the more you think instead about the spreading heat that builds and builds and hurts, growing more pervasive and insidious. You wish you could crawl out of your skin. Become something less confusing, and less confused. 

His thrusts force little squeaks from your throat. Your thighs twitch. This isn’t _your_ body. It can’t be. A tension grasps your abdomen like a fist. Your teeth grind into your bottom lip and you think,  _I don't want this._

Dizzily, your vision focuses on the Joxter’s eyes, glinting almost gold; they’re lidded and darkly amused. You _hate_ him. But with hatred or not, the sensation peaks, regardless of how you feel about it. Your legs tighten around his waist, inadvertently drawing him deeper. Leaning in, the Joxter whispers into your ear and the words trickle unpleasantly down the length of your spine, “enjoying yourself, hmm?” You clench around him. It doesn’t take him long to finish, after that.

When he pulls away, and tucks himself back into his pants, you feel empty and perverted and wrong. But there’s no energy to close your legs, no energy to sit up, no energy for anything. You lie pointlessly still, and stare up into the sky.

“I’m going to get some breakfast,” you hear distantly. “Do make sure he’s not dead.”

“Can he die from that?”

“It's a joke, darling.”

“Oh.”

Bendy comes into your field of view, gazing down at you curiously. Suddenly, you’re no longer okay with having your entire front unguarded. Fear motivates you to sit up, squeeze your thighs shut, and wrap your arms around yourself.

“I didn’t know you liked screwing the Joxter so much,” Bendy says conversationally.

You start crying. You don’t know why, exactly. 

“Aw. I guess not even getting laid can cheer you up, huh?”

Your diaphragm hurts with the hiccuping sobs wracking through you. It looks awful, you’re sure. You wish you would stop.

Bendy makes a sympathetic noise, and reaches as if to comfort you – but the moment you see his hand coming for you, you scramble back, cringing, gasping, and curling into yourself protectively.

“Jeez, scared much? It’s almost like you think I’m going to hurt you.” He says it like he’d enjoy nothing more.

“Don’t, don’t, please-“

“Hmm, I really want to, but I guess I can settle for less. How about instead, you touch your nose?”

That statement is so absurdly random, so out of place, that you stare through watery eyes, certain you must have misheard.

“Touch your nose,” he repeats. “You don’t want to disobey, right?”

“I-I don’t understand,” you say. Is this a trick? A joke? 

Bendy takes a step closer. "Do what I say or I’ll hurt ya, simple as that.”

You stop seeking answers, and poke your finger to the tip of your nose.

Bendy laughs. “You booped yourself!”

... What.

“Do it again,” he urges.

This is unreal. It’s a childish game that doesn’t have any place on the heels of what the Joxter had just done to you. And yet Bendy’s threatening to torture you over it. In dull disbelief, you prod the tip of your nose a second time.

" _Boop_ ," Bendy supplies happily. 

There is something so wrong with him. 

"Okay," he says, "that was just a warm up. Now, hit yourself." 

You drop your hand. “I-I don’t want-“

“Hit yourself.”

You whimper like a squashed animal. “W-will you leave me alone, i-if I do?”

Bendy crosses his arms. “I won’t pull out your intestines and force them down your throat. Sound like a good deal?”

 _The Joxter wouldn’t let him,_ part of you thinks. Another part counters, _the Joxter wouldn’t be able to stop him._ You're so confused. But much too scared to say no. So you strike your palm across your cheek.

Bendy snorts, “pff, you call that a hit? That’s way too gentle. Try again.”

Just obey. He’ll get bored of this eventually. Probably. Just obey until he does. You crane your hand back, and hit your cheek as hard as you can. 

“Hah! Quit hitting yourself! Gosh Happy, I didn’t know you were so self-destructive.”

Miserable, you drop both hands into your lap. Ha ha.

Bendy’s tail flicks from left to right. “All right. Touch yourself.”

He can’t mean….

He lightly bites his tongue and nods, grinning. “Uh-huh. Stick your fingers up your cunt. Push ‘em in real far.”

It takes you several seconds of horror to really process the command, even though you know right away what he means, despite not knowing one of the words. Then, weakly, you utter, “d-don’t make me. Not that.”

“Do it now, Happy.”

You're torn between terror and revulsion. “N-no," you dare to voice.

His expression turns irritated in a matter of seconds. "Here's the deal, _Snufkin_. If ya don't do it in four seconds, I'm gonna do it for ya." He holds up all the fingers on his right hand. “Four… three…. Two….”

“Okay,” you gasp out. “Okay. I'll do it.”

Bendy clasps his hands behind his back and smiles. “I’m waitin'.”

You take a shaky, steadying breath. Don’t think about it. Just... just do as he says. Like an object performing a function. A thing not a person. Still, you hesitate. You're already exposed, and it's not anything he hasn't already seen, but... the idea of doing _that_ , on your own volition -

He's starting to look unhappy. You've probably wasted as much time as he'll allow. So. You hold your breath. Don't think about it. Just obey. Repeating that thought over and over, you push one finger up inside yourself. It’s warm, and disgustingly wet.

“Two fingers,” Bendy demands.

Okay. Two, then. When you add a second finger, it burns. Tears that had earlier abated now prick at the corners of your eyes. Detachment becomes painfully difficult to maintain. You feel small, utterly powerless, and humiliated. 

“Deeper,” he orders. You force both fingers in to the last knuckle, and any attempt to keep yourself together fails.

“Move ‘em in and out.” And you do. You fuck yourself on your fingers, sobbing and shaking and wanting to die.

Then, he laughs. “Wow, you’re disgusting! Snufkins really _are_ sluts.”

You pull out your slick fingers, eyes round, bottom lip trembling.

“I can’t believe you actually did that,” he crows.

“Y-you _asked_ -“

“Hah, yeah, but I didn’t think you'd do it! Wow, there’s something _really_ wrong with you.”

Your wet fingers wind up in your hair, gripping tight enough to pull your scalp. "N-no, you ordered-"

“That’s why you like when the Joxter screws you, isn’t it? ‘Cause you’re a dirty Snufkin. You can’t even help it.”

“ _Stop_ ….” you hiss, screwing your eyes shut. A migraine is swelling at the base of your skull, scrawling up into your brain.

“Wanna know what you sounded like? You were all _oh, oh Joxter, oh, please, more~”_

You – you hadn’t said that. You don’t think you had said anything like that. You don’t know for sure. Maybe you had. Your nails dig into your skull, like you can tear out the words. “No no no…” you mutter like a litany.

“Pff, don’t try to deny it. I heard you. And I saw you bucking your hips. Don’t worry – all of your kind are like that.”

He has to be lying. Right? You don’t think he’s lying.

“I mean, you are pretty much one step away from just _asking_ him to screw you.”

You release your hair in favor of clapping your palms over your ears. You wouldn't  _do_ that, you would _never_ ask for it - But then, you didn't think you'd ever like something like that to begin with, did you? 

A hand touches your cheek. You recoil with a half scream, and your eyes flare open. The Joxter has returned. He’s holding a leafy branch with ripe blackberries. “What did you do to him?” he asks mildly.

“I called him a _slut_ ,” Bendy replies proudly.

“Hum. Naturally. He is one, after all.”

You’re not. Are you?

“Why are you shaking your head, dear?” the Joxter soothes. “You must know it’s true. You love being fucked by your papa."

"And by me, apparently."

"And by anyone, I imagine, should the chance arise," the Joxter agrees, hunting through his branch to find a particularly plump berry, which he plucks and squeezes lightly between his fingers. "Snufkins are such funny creatures."

“We were playing a game, too,” Bendy tells the Joxter. “Anything I ask him, he does. Fun, right?”

“Oh, like Simon says,” the Joxter remarks.

“Simon says what?”

“It's a game. One person is chosen to be Simon. They give the commands. All commands starting with ‘Simon says’ must be obeyed, while all that to do not must be ignored.”

“Oooh. So you can trip up the person obeying, I get it. What’s the punishment for messing up?”

The Joxter’s amber eyes settle upon you. “I’m sure we could be inventive.”

Bendy squirms. “Let’s play that!”

“Hmm, first he needs a bath. He smells dreadful.”

“Aww, what? He smells fine.”

The Joxter looks at Bendy sideways. “… Can you even smell anything at all?”

Bendy flicks out his tongue like a snake. “A bit. You smell worse than him.”

“Hum pff.” The Joxter pats down his coat and tweaks his whiskers, looking ruffled. “That may be, but I can’t smell myself, and I _can_ smell him.” His attention turns back to you, and you wish it wouldn’t. “You left your pants off, dear. Were you hoping I’d have the energy to go again?" You start shaking your head violently, and he chuckles. “Or perhaps Bendy?”

You choke. “I’ll pass,” Bendy interjects.

“Well, I know you must be eager for more,” the Joxter tells you, “but even dirty Snufkins need baths sometimes.”

You twist to the side. Your stomach clenches. A foul taste touches the back of your tongue, and then watery chunks splatter onto the dirt.

“Oh,  _gross_ ,” you hear Bendy mutter.

“Lovely,” the Joxter sighs. “Right where he sleeps. He’s got no intelligence at all.”

“Is he still sick?”

“Just stress, I suspect.”

You gag a few more times until you’re sure you've gotten it all out. After that, you feel surprisingly numb. Your heart hurts with how much it’s racing, but otherwise… you’re calm.

"Now we have to feed him again," the Joxter complains.

"I'll feed him later. I like giving him food. He's cute when he eats."

"Mm, he is." The Joxter meanders away from you and ruffles through the packs around his canoe. He returns with new clothes draped over his arm. "Say, will you be coming along?" 

“Blah. I’m done with water for now. I’ll mess with him when he’s back.”

Ah. So you have something to look forward to. That’s fine.

“Don’t you worry, dear,” the Joxter tells you, shuffling up to your side. “I’ll get you fresh and clean.” He laces fingers with you. You think about cutting off your hand. There’s a strange, horrifying amount of detail in that thought, detail that you never ever would have imagined before. Blood and bones and pain.

And then he pulls you to your feet. Together, holding hands, you traverse through the forest, beneath the waving foxtail trees, then amongst flamingo pink wildflowers. Grass and leaves bend and crumple beneath your dazed footsteps. Birds chirrup, and the breeze sighs through branches. It’s turned out to be a perfect sunny day. With every step, you feel your stitches tug your skin.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” the Joxter says.

You don’t answer.

It’s not long before the two of you come upon the creek. It’s a modest size, and has clear, gently flowing water. It can’t be more than half a foot deep. Reeds and rushes gather near the banks. Again, thoughts trickle in without any emotional impact: you imagine your face shoved under the current, your cheek ground against the pebbles, thrashing and muted screaming that nobody would hear. The Joxter kisses the top of your hand, and then your forehead. You mutely tolerate it, staring at the water. He could kill you so easily. 

The Joxter steps down into the creek, water swirling around his ankles, and once there, he tugs your hand. _Come, join me_.

It’s then, only then, that you freeze. You don’t actually intend to. You don’t think about stopping, or consciously mull it over. Your feet simply halt in the muddy bank, and there’s not a single thing you can do about it.

The Joxter gazes at you from beneath the brim of his hat. “Happy,” he says.

“No.” It’s another involuntary, unplanned thing, that word.

“Don’t make a fuss.”

He’s going to drown you. “I don’t wanna go in the water,” you say hoarsely.

“It’s just a bath, dear.”

He pulls harder, and then you heave back, like a stubborn calf balking at slaughter. There's a momentary tug-of-war before you rip out of his grip so hard that your legs go flying up and your ass hits the bank.

"Ah," the Joxter peers at you with a mildly puzzled expression, as if he wasn't at all expecting that.

Some instinct tells you to start apologizing, right _now_ , because maybe he’ll forgive you if you’re apologetic enough. That would probably be the logical thing to do. Instead, fire leaps through your veins; letting out a terrified squeak, you skitter to your feet and start running. Your stitches tear, branches whap your face and your ankle lands wrong but you keep running; you run like hell is after you because it is.

But you don’t make it very far. A wiry arm clenches around your neck and then the two of you spill to the ground in a feral flailing of limbs. The struggle is brief and pitiful, between predator and prey, and it ends with him on top of you, a fist cocked back to strike.

“Sorry!” you gasp, “sorry, sorry, I won’t-“

He drops his fist so both his hands frame your head. He’s breathing hard. “That’s very disappointing, Happy.”

“I didn’t mean to, I’m sorry-“

“No, you did mean it.” he’s disquietingly calm. Dangerously calm. There’s no real expression on his face beyond tiredness, and no real tone in his voice, but you’re still certain you've done something very wrong.

“I understand, of course,” the Joxter says. “You must think I can’t take care of myself.”

“Wh-what?”

“It’s a logical conclusion. But quite wrong, I’m afraid.” He scoots off you. A firm, calloused hand grips your ankle, the other grips the arch of your boot.

“Wait-“ 

With a single sharp jerk, he twists your ankle. To your credit, you make no noise but a sharp hiss through your teeth. When he releases, you curl up, tenderly touching the ankle that’s already swelling under your boot.

His hands march up over yours. “You see,” he continues, peeling one away from your ankle. “I’ve been doing this for a long time on my own, as well.” He snaps your pointer finger against the back of your hand. That's when you finally scream. “I consider myself quite practiced, quite talented.” He gently covers the back of your hand with his, and then not so gently forces all your fingers, including the broken one, to curl into a fist. 

A series of noises something like shrieking erupt from your mouth. But he's not done. There’s a _shick._  Something cold and sharp touches your cheek. You see the little silver glint in the corner of your eye, and start giggling uncontrollably.

“I know well how to handle disobedient Snufkins,” he says, and your skin splits open under the knife, right below your left eye. “I simply prefer not to. A very important distinction.”

“H-ha, s-s-stop-“

“Furthermore,“ he finishes the slice at the bottom of your jaw, “you ought to remember that you stay alive on _my_ order.”

He completes his speech with another cut bisecting the first, slicing from the corner of your lip to halfway across your cheek.

You twist under him; your uninjured cheek grinds against the dirt and your mouth is wrenched apart as wide as it can go while full, insane laughs burst from your chest. Tears streak from your eyes and wet the soil.

“Oh,” the Joxter says.

You can’t stop. Your diaphragm hurts like it’s being stretched apart, your stitches must be splitting, and yet you can’t stop laughing.

"I will admit," the Joxter adds, "the laughing is quite new. How refreshing it is, to still be surprised by a Snufkin."

Soon enough your laughter turns into a choking whooshing failure of an attempt to draw in air. Even then, you can't bring yourself to stop, gasping and straining for air that you never really get. Your eyes roll and fix on a tuft of grass that wobbles in and out of focus. And that, that too seems absurd, so unimaginably normal, that your lungs work extra extra hard to keep laughing.

"Um."

Your body spasms. Everything you see is starting to get splotchy and dark. You hear your own laughter as if it's smothered beneath a pillow. That seems fitting, you think, very very fitting - 

 

 

 

Air rushes into your lungs. You blink, and feel disoriented, dizzy, uncertain of your bearings.

“Ah, awake now?” the Joxter asks. He’s no longer on top of you. Instead, he’s smoking his pipe a good five feet away, looking as if he had just been on the verge of a nap.

You taste blood, and upon touching your tongue, realize you had bit into the muscle.

“Are we done being dramatic?”

Dramatic. Your eyes slide to your left hand. It’s swollen. One finger is twisted in the wrong direction. You giggle.

“Happy?”

You nod weakly. Done being dramatic.

“There we go.” His voice is smooth and gentle as your father’s. So are his paws, when he nears and cradles your face with a benevolent tenderness. “I wish I didn’t need to hurt you… But what else should a Joxter do with a disobedient Snufkin?”

You don’t really have an answer. He helps you to your feet.

Right. He's going to give you a bath. That was what was planned. Don't be dramatic. He supports you as you limp to the creek, and he bears most of your weight as the two of you step in together. The water is freezing and pleasantly numbing on your twisted ankle. He could drown you so, so easily.

"I do love to see those smiles," the Joxter susurrates. His calloused fingers stroke along your lips. The sunlight through the leaves speckles his hat and brightens his eyes to that near-gold color. He looks so content, albeit tired. Then he's tugging off your overcoat. You don't protest, don't fight back. Goosebumps raise on your skin when you're finally completely naked. 

“Opened some of your stitches, I see,” he tsks. “Nothing too awful. Still, you ought to be more careful, love.”

More careful. That would be good, you think. You keep hurting yourself. Doing stupid things. Sure enough, there’s blood dribbling from a few torn stitches. It’s really not as bad as it had felt. When you prod the frayed lips of the wound, blood comes away at your fingertips.

“Don’t touch,” he scolds.

The next moments feel quite dreamlike. He removes his gloves, and you see his coal-colored paws, not unlike your own. His touch is firm but soft, kneading over your bare shoulders, trailing down your shoulder blades, meeting in the middle. Then, light as a feather, his fingertips glide down the length of your spine. Little hairs stick up on your arms and the back of your neck. You shiver.

He sighs reverentially. You feel his warm breath tickle the back of your neck. His paws slide to grip your hips, and he pulls your back flush to his chest.

“So thin,” he breathes, stroking along your ribs. “Such a fragile Snufkin. Tell me you’ll call me papa one day, Happy, do tell me that.”

You’re staring down into the water, where your shadow and your reflection mingle. Your broken sad body gazes back up at you from the water, with hollow cheeks, lanky hair, crooked nose, and a stomach knotted with more stitches than you can count. You don’t want it anymore, this thing that looks back at you.

The Joxter’s shadow bears over yours. His touch travels along top ridge of your hip bone. He lingers there, tracing small circles, then cascades down, following the curve of the bone. He keeps going from there, until the calloused pads of his fingertips are caressing your bare inner thigh.

"No-" You watch as the person in the water smiles. You watch as they try to push away creeping fingers, and fail.

“Such a pretty Snufkin,” he breathes against the crook of your neck. Fabric presses to your back, tickles your thighs. “You desire me, don’t you?” 

You don’t think you do. But you aren’t thinking much of anything.

“Yes, I know Snufkins well…” His fingers glide over the hair between your legs, and then he’s touching the part of you that’s no longer private. Your water mirrored self struggles, briefly, and then freezes, chest rising and falling frantically. He kneads with practiced motions, neither too rough nor too soft. “In the end, they’re always needy for a loving papa. Isn’t that true, dear? Didn’t you think of your own papa like this? You told me he was such a good man…”

Your mind is thinking something very different than your body is, but the two are mixing in morbid, corrupt fashion.

“Shh, shh, relax… I can be just as good as him, Happy. I’ll take care of you.”

Your hips twitch. Sweat pricks at your skin despite the breeze against your flesh. His slimy tongue drags over your skin from your shoulder to just below your ear.

“Stop,” your reflection whispers.

“Whatever you say.” He takes your ear lobe in his mouth and sucks lightly; his fingers flick faster. Your breath hitches. The wounds on your abdomen sting as your stomach clenches. Then it releases; pleasure blooms outward in waves and reaches every extremity of your body. You squeeze your eyes closed, shutting away the image of your reflection quivering in ecstasy.

"There we go,” the Joxter sighs, cradling you tenderly. “Not so bad, hmm?”

 


	8. Character Designs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy this Not Chapter. All the art shown here is done by Sp00py, so many many thanks to him.

**Happy:**

Snufkin. Doesn't deserve what he's getting. Nervous smiler. Generally dislikes people, prefers being on his own (or with his dad), but is good-hearted and will help people when needed. Fear of drowning, and all kinds of new exciting fears now.

**"Mama Foxter":**

Joxter. Happy's father. A good dad. Protective. Doesn't understand why Joxters like to hurt Snufkins. Thinks Snufkins are just fine unhurt and unmolested. Great sense of smell. 

**"Lazy Joxter":**

Joxter. Great sense of smell, most often used for tracking down Snufkins. The laziest piece of shit. Favorite hobbies include murdering and raping as long as he doesn't have to invest too much effort. Very fond of flowers and naps. 

**Bendy:**

Ink demon. Average senses in his small form; terrible senses (especially sight) in his monster form. Doesn't shut up in his regular form; physically can't talk in his monster form. Can travel through ink into new books and stories.  

  

     

 

 

                


	9. Killing

The Joxter scrubs your skin clean, washes your wounds (old and new), and wraps your broken finger to the adjoining one. Then he dresses you in new clothes that aren’t your own. They smell musky with sweat, but carry the faint fragrance of mountain air and pine.

Through all this, the sun still shines overhead, and the forest creatures still chitter and sing. You’re beginning to understand that this is how things are. Normal is a bizarre inexplicable contrast between peaceful and painful. It had always been that way, but you had never known until recently. Throughout all of your childhood, your father must have been thinking of you - thinking of touching you, kissing you, invading you - and you had been none the wiser. But now you know how things are, especially how things are with Joxters. The real illusion is that there was anything uncorrupted to begin with.

The best thing to do in such a world is to be alone, and to try to live a life away from everyone who wants to hurt you. Of course, to do that you first have to escape. But escaping seems very unlikely indeed when, due to your twisted ankle, the Joxter has to support most of your weight out of the creek.

“Oh, poor thing,” the Joxter tsks, “shall we sit? Just a bit, until you feel ready to walk again.”

He doesn’t wait for your input before towing you to a clearer patch of grass, surrounded by white-flowered bushes and a cluster of pink dahlias. All business, he sits you down, and neatly arrays the hem of your overcoat around you.

“You ought to sit framed by flowers more often,” the Joxter tells you, brushing a leaf from your shoulder and tucking hair behind your ear. “It does make you look so pretty.”

You don’t have a response. You're trying hard not to think about the tingly sensation that has lingered between your legs ever since he touched you in the creek, and trying harder not to think about the fact you have no possible way to escape.

The Joxter settles beside you, and his hands skim along your thighs, up and down. “Truly remarkable that your father held out so long. You don’t suppose he’d like to join us sometime?”

You don’t want to think about that either (except now you are).

Once, many years ago, you’d returned early from a hunt, to find your father curled into himself, making little grunts and moans while working his fist between his legs. You hadn’t really understood at the time, but now you do, and you imagine those same noises susurrated into your ear while the two of them have their way.

“I like to think he wouldn’t be so mad as to turn down an offer like that,” the Joxter says good-naturedly.

“Probably not,” you reply dejectedly. Your father had never been prone to lasting anger.

“Oh good,” the Joxter responds, “he does sound like a reasonable man.”

“Would I stay with you still?” you ask.

“Hm?”

“If my father came back.”

“We have a settled home. Much more suitable for a son, don’t you think?”

“Nh.”

“And, naturally,” the Joxter continues, plucking a plump pink dahlia, “we wouldn’t allow you to leave anyway. Bendy’s expecting to kill you, you know, and it would be very cruel to deny him that.”

You giggle pointlessly.

The Joxter fingers the flower petals. “I for one am curious to see how he’ll do it. I do hope he draws it out for you.”

“Has anyone ever escaped?”

“No one.” The Joxter’s pale eyes glitter. “Though, we’ve never kept one before, either. Perhaps you’ll surprise us.” He nestles the dahlia in your hair. “Pretty, just like you.”

You take the flower out and quietly mutilate it.

The Joxter frowns. “Now that seems uncalled for.”

There’s a strange amount of impatient, tense energy running in your veins. Once the flower is shredded to pieces, your hands slip under your shirt, find the stitches, and begin to scratch.

“No, no, love-“ The Joxter pulls your hands away sternly. “You’ll only hurt yourself that way. I know it itches, but you mustn’t scratch. Here, why don’t you make yourself a nice flower crown?”

He piles little white flowers into your hands, and nods encouragingly. To your own surprise, you immediately set to the task, as if doing such a thing will alleviate the energy you can’t otherwise shake off.

Yawning, the Joxter nestles against you. “Say, I should have followed Moomin home.”

You jerk your head up.

“Don’t look at me like that,” the Joxter reproaches. “It’s not for any cruel purpose. It’s simply, I’ve met a Moomin family or two, and at least one member can always make the best meals. I should have liked to eat a good meal from a Moominmamma or Moominpappa. And then perhaps take a long nap on their roof.”

“Nh.” You accidentally tear through a flower stem, and the Joxter supplies you with a new one.

“Moomins are a very domestic lot, you see. Family-oriented.” He gives you a nasty smile. “Not the way we Joxters are, of course.”

So that’s why Moomin had seemed so different. Part of you envies him for that. It would be nice, being born in a family that isn’t known for losing and hurting their children. But part of you is not so sure. Imagine, living in a house all the time, closed off from nature, and having not one but two parents, who are doting and attentive. It sounds frighteningly claustrophobic.

For a moment, you think you’re grateful that as awful as the Joxter and Bendy are, they at least aren’t trapping you indoors. The moment, blessedly, doesn’t last.

Your fingers knot the last stem in place, and you’ve finished with the flower crown.

“Lovely. Just one more thing, hm?” he braids the stem of a pink dahlia with the white flowers, just off-centered. This done, he places the newly made crown on your hair and coos. Maybe this is another inexplicable Joxter thing. Your father is the one who showed you how to make flower crowns. It shouldn’t be surprising that other Joxters might have the same sort of inclination.

Your stomach stings sharply, like lots of pinpricks tugging hard on your flesh. When you look down, you realize your hand is buried up under your shirt again, scratching.

“Happy,” the Joxter scolds. He pulls your wrist away and holds it firmly; you avert your eyes, a tense smile twists the edges of your lips. Maybe he wants to touch you again.

“Sorry. I’m sorry,” you say.

The Joxter’s looking closely at you, and if you didn’t know any better, you'd almost say there was concern. “Perhaps we’ve been too rough with you, dear. I’d rather keep you for quite a while, you know. You’re best enjoyed over time, after all.”

You aren’t sure if he’s trying to be comforting but if he is, it’s very much not working.

“Hum, tell you what, let’s go back home and you can take a nice nap with me in the canoe.”

You giggle, remembering, “Bendy wanted to play a game.”

“He’ll understand the principle of saving it for later. Delayed gratification, dear. Come along now.”

And that’s that. You rely heavily on the Joxter to support you as you walk back, your twisted ankle still flaring with pain on every step.

When you re-enter the clearing, Bendy’s hanging upside down with his legs looped over the bow of the canoe. He has an expression of intense boredom as he draws in the dirt using a stick.

“Hullo,” the Joxter greets.

“Nfh!” Bendy jerks and falls off the canoe before leaping back to his feet. “Hey, you’re back!” His expression changes the moment he sees your new injuries: the cut cheek, bandaged hand, the limp. “He’s hurt.”

“He was disobedient,” the Joxter explains.

“I could have helped.”

“Mm, it was a very quick correction. I certainly didn’t plan on investing the energy.” The Joxter frowns at you. “At any rate, I fear I’ve over-exerted him. We ought to let him rest.”

“Aw, what? But that’s what you said when he was “sick” too.”

“It was equally true then. Snufkins are fragile.”

“Now what am I supposed to do?” Bendy looks angrily at you as if it was entirely your fault. You suppose it largely was.

“Mmh, what were you doing here?” The Joxter waves at Bendy’s stick art.

“Drawing.”

“Perhaps draw more?”

“Nah.” Bendy throws the stick. “This is a dumb way to draw, anyway.” He stalks up to you and you tense, but don’t manage to otherwise react before he grabs your scarf and tugs your head down closer to his level. “Hey Happy,” he says loudly, “Can you stop being disobedient so we can play more games? Kay, thanks.” He shoves you off. “I’m goin’ for a walk. Whenever Happy smiles, I want to hurt his face too much.”

“I do understand.”

With an angry flick of his tail, Bendy stalks off into the forest, and the Joxter looks after him thoughtfully. “He’s got so much energy. I’d wish there was a way to trade but…” the Joxter yawns wide. “Sleeping is such a lovely thing to do, I don’t know why you’d ever trade it away.”

This said, he slung himself over the canoe edge and plopped into the nest. You see his limbs stretch out of the canoe, hear another loud yawn, and then he disappears entirely into the fluff.

Your eyes curve to the place you had buried the knife. If the Joxter falls asleep… if you can jam the blade into his throat before Bendy returns…

But then you’d have to be able to run. It would undoubtedly ruin your ankle forever, but at least you’d be alive, at least you’d be free.

“Say,” the Joxter’s voice comes from inside the canoe, “You threw up all over your last sleeping patch, didn’t you? Why don’t you come join me, dear?”

One awkwardly loud laugh burps up from your throat.

“Don’t make me force you. Please, that’s far too much effort. I’ve already done enough.”

The implication is pretty clear that he’s fully capable of forcing you but finds the task tedious, and that can’t mean anything good. Filled with dread, you hobble to the edge, and peer in.

He smiles up, his body snuggled cozily in the piles and piles of fluff and petals. From a closer look, it seems all the fluff is the sort used to stuff bedrolls, and it doesn’t take you much longer after that to guess from where he got the bedrolls. It must have taken quite a few to get the entire canoe filled.

“Come along, dear. I do enjoy having a Snufkin to nap with.”

“You’re going to rape me,” you say, smiling. You understand now what that word means.

“I would never.” Then, the Joxter laughs too. “Oh, very well, I would, but – not now. I’ve only got the energy for that about once a day, you know, unless something really riles me.”

You don’t know whether to believe him or not.

“Anyhow,” he says, “is it really rape anymore?”

“No,” you have to admit, then “yes,” and then you don’t know. You don’t want to experience it ever again. You don’t even want to be touched ever again. But you had liked it, hadn’t you?

“Last time I’ll ask, my little Snufkin…” the Joxter pats beside him.

There’s not really any choice. That’s something you’re learning. You don’t get choices. At least not reasonable ones.

So you climb over the edge and, tenderly avoiding pressure on your ankle, settle yourself beside the Joxter. It is incredibly comfortable. Your muscles immediately relax into it, as it’s softer than the softest bed of flowers, though the Joxter is too hot beside you, and smells sour.

You turn your head away, tuck your wrists to your chest.

“Oh, no need for that…” Then he’s closer, wrapped around you, and bile rises in your throat. “I’m not going to hurt you, love… I’d never... mh…”

Your eyes flick down. His cheek is pressed to your chest. His eyes are closed. There’s no way. Is he…

There’s a soft snore. He is. Sleeping, just like that.

In the coming minutes, you think again and again about the knife, and again and again about killing the Joxter with it. _But your ankle_ , part of you protests; _but this might be your only chance_ , another part retorts.

You’d like to say you came to some decision, that this seesaw back and forth led somewhere productive, but even many moments later, you haven’t decided anything at all. And then, close to an hour later, you still haven’t done anything, when a sound pricks your ears. A distant sound. But one getting closer.

It’s a deep voice spitting out panicked protests, yelling, screaming. The Joxter’s amber eyes blink sleepily open. He lifts his head, a trail of saliva drooling from his lips to your shirt. “What is….?”

“Let me go!” the voice roars, much closer.

You sit up straighter, and peer over the canoe edge.

Bendy prowls from the trees like a shadow splintering to life, carrying with him a sharp chemical stench. The sight of him sets adrenaline pumping through your veins, and strangles the air from your lungs.

You’re ashamed to be grateful that it isn’t you who’s got his attention. He’s dragging a struggling, green-coated individual with him. A Snufkin, feral as they come, clawing furiously at Bendy’s wrist.

“Ah, you’re back,” the Joxter chirrs. “With some company, it seems.”

Bendy throws the Snufkin bodily towards the canoe, and the poor individual hits the ground hard enough to bounce. He crumples with a low groan, looking like little more than a lump of mossy green fabric. Bendy shrinks back into his smaller form, grinning wide and striding towards the collapsed Snufkin. “I got a friend for Happy,” he says in a singsong.

“Ohh?” the Joxter purrs, folding his fingers over the edge of the canoe and giving a wide, sleepy smile.

“I was just walking around, and then I heard _him_ \- ” Bendy accentuates the word by jumping onto the Snufkin’s spine (the air thuds out of his lungs in one rush), “playing the harmonica!”

“How unexpected,” the Joxter replies, voice suffused with glee. “And here I thought there were no Snufkins left nearby anymore – especially not so close.”

Casual, sadistic joy. This is normality. This is what the world is like. But you weren't fully prepared to see it directed at another individual.

The Snufkin is struggling to rise on his gloveless fawn-colored paws, but Bendy hops off him and kicks his arms out from under him. “He stuck a knife in my foot,” Bendy says quite cheerfully, “so I broke his leg.” As proof, Bendy’s tail snares the Snufkin’s ankle and cranks it up towards his hip – the poor mumrik spasms in pain.

“That seems only fitting,” the Joxter looks delighted; your stomach turns.

“Stop him,” you whisper without thinking. You don’t consider yourself altruistic. In fact, you prefer having nothing to do with people at all. But the idea of watching someone else get hurt like this is unbearable.

The Joxter chuckles, “why ever would I do that, dear?”

You have to help him. You have to do something. You twitch, and lean partly over the canoe edge, but you don’t quite work up the courage to actually move.

“Do you wanna fuck this one?” Bendy asks, grinding his heel on the back of Snufkin’s skull.

“Hum, hmm.” The Joxter shifts beside you. “Very tempting, but I’m afraid I don’t have the energy for that. I’m quite content to watch. Do make it dreadful.”

No, you need to stop them. Your nails dig into the canoe edge. Still you do nothing.

“Oh, all to myself then.” Bendy’s voice hitches. Something awful is going to happen to this Snufkin.

You gather courage and cough out a weak, “stop,” but it’s drowned out in the Snufkin making an enraged half scream and trying to scramble up – it doesn’t end in his favor when Bendy rips off his hat, buries his fingers in his sweaty blond hair, and then repeatedly slams his face into the ground.

Bendy is much stronger than he looks.

“S-stop!” you yell hoarsely.

That he does hear. His grin widens as he looks up, and tenderly cards his fingers through the trembling Snufkin’s hair. “Oh, Happy, didn’t know you were gonna participate.”

The Joxter chitters. “Perhaps Happy has some suggestions.”

“N-no-“ You shrink away from both of their gazes, reminded strongly about why interfering is a very, very bad idea.

“I bet Happy wants to hear him scream.” Bendy wrenches the Snufkin’s head up. The pointed tip of his tail wraps twice around his throat before slithering up his cheek. “Come on,” he coos, “all I wanna do is gouge out one little eye-“

But now the mumrik’s bloodied and mud-smeared face is visible, expression distorted in a mix of fear, pain, and helpless fury. He’s got feline eyes: one brown, one blue. His blond whiskers are long, and the stripe on his nose is such a pale fawn that it nearly blends in with his skin.

The Joxter realizes it at the same time as you do. Any trace of pleasure is wiped from his face in a fraction of a second. “ _That’s not a Snufkin!_ ” he gasps.

The spades tip punctures through the mumrik’s lower eyelid, and into the soft jelly of his eye.

“STOP!” The Joxter tears out of the canoe. You don’t see what happens next, because your own eyes slam shut, the grisly image emblazoned in your mind, but you do hear the flurry of words:

“Bendy, he’s a Joxter!”

“Hey, stop it-“

“ _He’s a Joxter_!”

“No, he’s not. He’s got the green hat, a harmonica– _let go of me_!”

There’s a dull thud; you finally open your eyes to see the Joxter sitting in the dirt looking shocked, and you realize Bendy must have just shoved him off. The demon himself is now standing between the two Joxters – the new one is curled into himself, blood dripping between the fingers crushed to his face.

“You promised me I could have this one,” Bendy growls, tail flicking in either excitement or agitation.

“That was before I knew he was a Joxter-“

“His blood tastes like a Snufkin.” That… that is excitement.

The Joxter makes a visceral strangled noise, face ashen, and he struggles for words – most likely ones that don’t broach the idea that all Joxters might taste like Snufkins.

Bendy grins, evidently satisfied he’s won the argument, and he turns around to fix his attention on his new victim. The mumrik squeaks, tries to scoot away with a broken leg and one hand clutching his eye.

“N-no, let me go-"

“I-I’ll get you a new one,” the Joxter dives after Bendy and grabs his arm; the demon’s expression turns sour real fast. “A-a new Snufkin,” the Joxter says frantically, “wouldn’t you like that?”

“I want this one.” Bendy yanks his arm free and glares. “Anyway, you promised me a Snufkin at the lake, too, but you never told me where to find one-“

“Ah-“

“And you didn’t let me mess with Happy when he was sick, and now I can’t mess with him because _you_ hurt him!” Ink is beginning to bubble down over his face, and your bones shake, because if he gets angry enough, you’re not convinced he won’t just murder everything in the clearing.

The Joxter seizes on Bendy's idea, “Happy, you could kill Happy, you could use the spikes and everything-“

You choke, and cower behind the canoe’s hull.

“No,” Bendy snarls. Ink drips from his entire body, his limbs becoming longer, spikes pushing out from his lengthening spine. “I caught this one, I brought him here-“ the last words bubble, and Bendy angrily spits out ink through sharpening teeth, “and it doesn’t matter _what_ species-“ again the words are arrested, and the Joxter trips in his attempt to retreat backwards, now looking much smaller beside Bendy.

“Y-you’re right, of course, I wasn’t thinking-“

Bendy comes down on all fours; any further words are lost in a low, bone-rumbling growl. He's now nearly twice the Joxter's height, and every skeletal line of his body is sharp with danger. There’s no doubt at all in your mind that somebody is going to die. Maybe multiple somebodies, and maybe you.

With a massive feat of self-control, the Joxter stops backing up, and he keeps his fists firmly at his sides. You understand now, after having seen it once before: in these situations, the Joxter does his best to avoid looking like prey. If he doesn’t look like prey, then he’s much less likely to become prey.

The other mumrik doesn’t have the benefit of knowing that. He sees Bendy and immediately tries to run with his broken leg, which is a stumbling, pathetic affair. Bendy’s attention snaps to him like a wolf to a rabbit. Dirt sprays as he bolts. You don’t see exactly what happens, but there’s an aborted scream, and a series of wet thuds as both Bendy and the new Joxter hit the ground and roll. It ends with Bendy lurching to his feet, covered in dust, and the mumrik dangling upside from his teeth.

Bendy shakes his head like a dog, and the mumrik’s body senselessly rattles and flails, making gurgled protests. You’re breathless by how unreal it looks – like a sack of bones with fleshy appendages, shaken so violently as to tear something. You fully appreciate how absurdly easy it is for Bendy to kill a person.

As if in proof of this thought, Bendy rears up onto his back legs and throws down the mumrik hard. His skull bounces. Something definitely cracks. You're horrified to imagine a person can live through all this, when the abused Joxter groans, shifts as if to rise. Immediately Bendy’s on top of him. Claws part flesh like a knife slicing through wet cake; a black tongue instinctively seeks the fresh blood.

The mumrik rattles off burbling nonsense words that chill your blood because they are so very much like the noises you’ve made in raw terror – except you’d survived, and you don’t think that this Joxter surviving is an option at this point.

His arms instinctively raise to push Bendy off. Without hesitation, Bendy snaps his forearm into a twisted L shape with a limp hand pointlessly attached at the end like a glove. The noise that rips from the mumrik’s throat is horrific to hear; your eyes slam shut and you cover your ears, but it doesn’t do enough.

You don’t know if it’s better or worse when you next hear a strange organic popping noise, without having any idea what happened. All you know is the resulting scream turns gravelly and wet before cutting out. This is succeeded by a series of whimpers, moans, and futile wordless begging. There’s squelching, and heavy rattling breathing. What Bendy’s doing – whatever he’s doing - is not eating; it’s not a quick killing. It’s savage, calculated mutilation. And based on the excited huffing, he's very much enjoying it.

Something bumps your side: you jerk your head to find the Joxter climbing into the canoe beside you, his face pale and eyes wide.

“Best to let him get it out of his system,” he says matter-of-factly. In the background, before you can stop yourself, you glimpse Bendy pinning the other Joxter high on a tree trunk by his claws and weight, and his tongue is pushed deep into a bloody hole that was once an eye socket.

As you watch paralyzed, Bendy tears his head away. Thick strands of ink connect his mouth to the mumrik’s face and the bleeding, widened eye socket. The demon's free front paw tightens around the Joxter’s arm. There’s tearing flesh, the snapping of bones, and suddenly your eyes are squeezed shut, because creator above Bendy had just twisted the mumrik’s arm off.

In the canoe with you, the Joxter presses close to your side, and links fingers with you. You squeeze his hand, and then hunch over, giggles working their way uncomfortably up your throat. It’s a quiet fit, blessedly, small gasping giggles that you doubt leave the confines of the canoe.

“This isn’t a time to laugh,” the Joxter says numbly.

You try to apologize, you try to say anything, and all you do is continue to make the same raspy hoarse giggling.

Above it, you can hear the final bloated gurgles of the mumrik. And then snicking teeth, ripping flesh, lots of awful wet squelching and snapping. Suddenly you have to jerk your chin up and suck in careful breaths, eyes squeezed shut, because the hunched position made you need to vomit.

The metallic reek of blood is flooding your nostrils, only adding to your nausea. Its several long minutes later before no new noises manifest. The new Joxter is, without a doubt, long dead, and the concept of having seen a person alive only moments ago that is now dead shakes you. Then it’s too quiet for your own comfort, and you begin to worry that perhaps killing that Joxter hadn’t been enough, perhaps Bendy will slink to the canoe to fish you out.

You don’t want to look, but the fear of that very thing inspires you to check over the edge of the canoe. The Joxter’s head peeks out beside yours.

The entire clearing is spattered and smeared with red. It’s streaked a dusty brown color in the dirt, and is splattered bright red against a few trees. In the middle of the clearing, there’s a head, staring sightlessly at the sky, and most of a torso, with the ribs broken and pried apart, but nothing else in big enough pieces to be recognizable.

At first, you don’t see Bendy, and you're stricken with fresh fear, because if you don’t know where he is, he could be anywhere.

Then you witness the flick of a thin black tail between the Joxter’s ribs, where they have been ripped free of meat. There’s a small black lump where one’s heart and lungs ought to be, and the faint outline of horns. Sickeningly, you understand. Bendy’s curled up inside the Joxter’s mutilated chest cavity. Like it’s a nest.

“Ah.” the Joxter evidently just observed the same thing. He retreats from the bow and slumps heavily against the side of the canoe, his face white. Slowly, he draws out a pipe from his pocket and lights it.

Stiffly, he says, “Let’s respect his desire for alone time, yes?”


	10. Cuddling

The Joxter’s knuckles are squeezed tight around his pipe. Pipes are generally savored, you know that from your father: they’re best taken slow, with time between inhales to treasure the tastes. The Joxter isn’t taking that time right now. His lips close around the mouthpiece with each inhale, and you can’t imagine how there’s anything but smoke left in his lungs. He’s been staring at the same spot on the canoe for a while now. You’re not exactly sure how long, because time is moving oddly.

The foul smell of blood and death clogs your nostrils. The entire clearing is thick with it. You had known before that Bendy killed – it’s impossible _not_ to know that. But you’d known it as a fact, not as a reality. You’d never witnessed it before. Never been so close to it. Now you know.

You’re shaking. You bring your hands before your eyes and stare at their trembling. Flesh and bone and blood. All of it so easily ripped apart, dehumanized. It’s nothing more than meat. Your own fragility terrifies you. And you are never, ever going to be able to escape.

“He ought to be all right now,” the Joxter finally whispers, rousing from his catatonia, “killing Snufkins always puts him in a good mood.”

For a fraction of a second, you had forgotten just the sort of person the Joxter is, but now you remember very clearly. The Joxter isn’t rattled because someone was just killed; he’s rattled because it was a Joxter, not a Snufkin. You are so very not safe.

“I’m going to take a walk, just in case,” the Joxter decides. Then he’s up and out of the canoe, gone into the woods.

You’re now alone, drowning in the reek of blood, and keeping company the demon curled inside a corpse.

Your expression wobbles. Your lips tilt up, your eyes crinkle, and then you’re letting out full-blown heaving laughs, hard enough that your ribs and lungs ache. You’re really tired of laughing. You’re really tired of everything, actually. You’re tired enough that you’d love nothing more than to stop existing for a bit. To come back to the world somewhere safe and distant and alone, or maybe just not come back at all.

Your laugh is strangled into nothing when you hear movement outside of the canoe. Liquid shifting, heavy footfalls. He’s heard you. He’s heard and now he’s coming to kill you. You’ll die just like that Joxter. You can imagine it already: claws carving to the bone, teeth sucking out huge wet bites of your flesh. It’s with both consuming terror and numb acceptance that you greet his lampblack head as it appears over the canoe, blotting out the sun, wearing a Cheshire grin wide as his face.

His bony body heaves up onto the canoe, claws gripping both edges hard enough to pierce through the wood, and then he’s framing you from above, looming and shedding blood and ink. He tilts his head to the side. Surveying you, as if deciding which part of you he wants to maim first.

Involuntary twitches jolt just below your skin. Ink drips onto your cheek. What is he waiting for? Why doesn’t he puncture your stomach open, fish you out of the canoe like a snared rabbit, and then pull your insides out?

Finally one paw dips into the canoe, tries to find somewhere to settle. You shrink away from the massive claws. A hind paw follows suit, tucking in amidst cottony fluff. You understand then. He’s trying to get _in_ the canoe. _With you_. Your spine slicks back, “S-stah-p-please-n-nuh-“

You may as well have said nothing. He’s almost too large to fit, but he manages to tuck all his limbs into the canoe walls, and then he slowly crouches, his ribcage nestling on your legs and his head nuzzling your stomach. Your heart is trying to rip itself from your chest. He’s so so very close. Those teeth are like two dozen knives, and his horns look much deadlier when they’re arching up on either side of your face. You've never seen the spikes marching down his back up so close, either. The thick scent of him burns your nose. Every part of him spells pain.You let out a squeak like a trampled mouse. Your breathing is much much too fast, but it’s a quiet whistling. It does nothing to drown out the sound of ink dripping, oddly confined and echoing inside the canoe.

So this is how he wants to kill you. Pressing close to you, pinning you in the canoe where you stupidly felt safer.

His body is beginning to melt. Ink drapes over your legs and hips like a heavy wet blanket. It pools under him, under you, and thickens the cotton to a swollen black mass. Paws tenderly cradle the sides of your head. It would be effortless for him to rip your head from your body. You lay very, very still, whimpering. The stench of ink is suffocating, acerbic. By this time your legs and hips are completely buried in the thick, heavy goo. Immobile.

Words are useless. Protests are useless. There is nothing you can do, nothing at all. Your tears are silent, helpless.

When his tongue touches your cheek, you flinch hard and squeeze your eyes shut. He licks up the tears, leaving ink trails in his wake. He lingers at the corners of your eyes, teases there as if wanting in. You vividly imagine his tongue burrowed in the other Joxter’s eye socket. Then you vividly imagine it buried in yours. All it takes is a single whim of his. You know he’ll do it. When he’s good and ready. When he’s drawn out your suffering to his satisfaction. You wonder in a panicky sort of way what it might feel like to have someone’s tongue plunged into your eye socket.

Then, to your amazement, his tongue drifts away, skimming along your cheek, then lapping at the curve of your ear. The bifurcated tip flicks over the sensitive cartilage, and you flinch, letting out a breathy, faint giggle. It tickles. Of all things. Isn’t that weird? It _tickles_.

Bendy chuffs – you jump at the noise. Then his tongue twines into your ear canal. The sounds of nature are shorted out: disturbingly, you hear nothing but the ink undulating wetly in your skull as a moist pressure.

You’re paralyzed. You don’t know what he’s doing or why. It’s not painful, even as the seconds pass, but that’s all wrong, because he should be hurting you. He should be ripping you limb from limb like he had that Joxter, he should be sinking his teeth into your flesh and yet he’s not. He’s building suspense. Drawing it out to wring every last drop of terror from you. It’s very much working.

Then his tongue is sliding out, leaving behind ink that dribbles from your ear. He lifts his head, contemplates you silently.

“Th-thank you,” you whisper hoarsely, without knowing why.

He’s breathing heavily. Heavier than what you think is normal but you’d never really kept track. He shifts a little. It’s hard to tell exactly _what_ shifts because at this point the entire canoe is flooded with ink up to your chest. It’s soaked all the way through your clothes, it’s _inside_ your clothes, squeezing and rubbing everywhere at once.

You breathe in fragile, fluttering sips and wince when the forked tips of his tongue lick up in parallel lines on either side of your ear. They arch into your hair, then meet in the middle. Together, they drift down and slide into your ear canal again. It’s astonishing how slowly he can go. How he can dip in and out and slither just a little further each time. Hot air sighs over your ear and ruffles your hair. Something starts to ache faintly.

A whispered protest rises to your lips and dies. You try to raise your arms to push him off, but they’re buried in ink that powerfully resists the movement.

In some poor facsimile of caring, claws comb through your sweaty hair. Desperate, you try to seek comfort from that. You’ll take anything at this point.

Then his tongue _pushes_. Pain explodes into your skull. Sudden dizziness overwhelms you, and a low ringing starts in your ear. He’s broken something. He’s most definitely torn something deep in your ear and now it’s not working the way it should. Still you feel him in your ear canal, thick and slimy and prying deeper. Each new movement now sears with pain. But you can’t move. Ink coats every inch of you from collarbone down, and his paws keep your head firmly cemented in place.

You pant in the weak, shallow breath his weight allows you. You don’t know if he’s putting more weight on your chest, or if it’s something else, but even those little breaths are becoming increasingly more difficult, as if your lungs are constricting tighter and tighter. It’s him, it has to be him, crushing your chest. He’s going to suffocate you this way. He _is_ suffocating you.

Stupid squeaking noises burst up from your throat. You mean to tell him no, not that it will do any good; you mean to struggle, not that it’ll get him to stop. You do neither of those things. Your breath gets shorter and shorter. You’re going to die here. Not from being shredded apart, like you thought, but from asphyxiation. His paw cups your other ear. All outside sound mutes out. There’s only the ringing in your ruined ear and the rush of blood through your skull. Even your heavy exhale is deadened, distant: you hear it not in the air but in your lungs, and it seems to fill your entire body. Your vision goes black when ink covers your eyes, too.

And then you’re weightless. Unattached. Unbalanced. For several seconds, you think you’re spinning, and you’re not sure if you’re laying on your back or your side, if you’re upside down or right side up. When your body instinctively jerks as if to righten itself, something warm and wet squeezes back. You can’t place yourself within reality. There’s no orientation, no grounding, no point of reference.

And… you breathe.

You continue breathing. Your lungs expand and air reaches deep, so very unlike the short gasping attempts you were managing before. It’s sharp. Acidic and chemical. But it’s air. And the more you inhale full deep breaths, the more tension departs from your muscles. There’s a lot of things you could think about, a lot of things that would send terror back in your bones, but you willfully don’t think of them. It’s been a very, very long time since you relaxed. Since you thought nothing. Since you were nothing. You decide you very much like being nothing.

And now, you are nothing. You are floating in a void. Senseless. Timeless. You don’t know where your body begins and ends. You don’t know if you’re still awake or if you’ve gone to sleep. You don’t mind either way. The relaxation that pours over you is unimaginable. 

Much much too soon, the liquid around you begins moving. Withdrawing. 

You wince from the return of noise, and squint and blink at the return of light. You feel dizzy, nauseous, and immediately wish you didn’t have to come back to reality. Reality, where your ear is throbbing, and where the corpse of a Joxter is rotting not twenty feet away. Where Bendy, now much smaller, is sprawled on your chest as if to sleep.

“That was fun,” he says thoughtfully, and you hear it all wrong, through only one ear, and it's displaced, as if it could be coming from anywhere. 

You already wish you could return to being nothing. "You didn't kill me," you whisper.

"Oh, no." His fingers stroke over your collarbone. "I want to keep you for a very long time, Happy."


	11. Traveling

For a while, there’s silence. Bendy’s content to stroke along your collarbones and your throat, and then your cheeks and back down, all without saying a thing. Waves of dizziness come and go.

At some point, you start giggling. It’s subdued, but lasts for several minutes. Long enough for Bendy to make fun of you for it. Long enough for him to stick his fingers down your throat to get you to shut up. You throw up over the edge of the canoe, and then laugh for a bit more, and then throw up again when you glimpse what’s left of the maimed Joxter.

Everything feels weird. Your skin is numb and tingly. Your throbbing ear is ringing but no other noise comes through. You’re having a difficult time understanding the sequence of events that had just occurred.

A Joxter was murdered. You were almost drowned in ink. You might be deaf now. Logically you know all that had just happened, and in that order, but it seems to be an oddly challenging thing to grasp.

“You’re deaf now?” Bendy asks, and you jump. Had you said that bit out loud? “Doesn’t that mean you can’t hear?” he snaps his fingers in front of your face; you flinch hard.

“Please don’t kill me. P-please don’t, I-I don’t wanna die.”

“Why did ya say you were deaf?”

“I don’t wanna die, I don’t – I don’t-“ Bendy looks annoyed. This is it. He’s going to rip you open chest to groin. He’s going to pull out your insides and play around with them. He’d probably make some kind of game out of it. You have no idea what kind of game, but he’d be able to think of something, no doubt. Loud, swooping laughs rush from your lungs.

“That’s… really not answering the question,” Bendy says.

You somehow squeeze broken apologies through the laughter. You can’t really do anything right.

“Wow,” Bendy says. “Don’t ya know how to talk to people?”

“He’s dead,” you say, giggling.

“He’s been dead for like, an hour, glad ya finally noticed.”

“Are you gonna kill me?”

“Eventually. Not now, though, yeesh. Chill.”

Right, that makes sense. You’re still interesting to them. They like when you giggle, you know that, and you're doing an awful lot of that right now, so you should have known he wasn’t going to kill you; you really should have known that. “I think you broke something,” you finally say.

“I broke a lot of things,” Bendy admits, looking out into the clearing.

“In my ear,” you specify.

“I was bein’ gentle,” Bendy replies, offended.

You have to admit he was. It’s simply very easy for him to maim, whether he intends to or not.

“I… I don’t know if my hearing will come back,” you vocalize, and a little giggle sneaks in.

“It’s pretty hilarious, isn’t it?”

“It might be permanent,” you add.

“Yeah, that’s –“ Bendy frowns at you, “kinda implied by whatchya said already.”

“Just gone,” you say. Hearing is important in the wilderness. Crucial for survival. A Snufkin that can’t place noises and is deaf on one side… well, that’s not a Snufkin who can live long on his own. Your brain tries to grasp the concept that you may never be able to live free again. But this idea, too, is slippery, worming out of your grasp. “I’m deaf,” you repeat, as if it will cement the idea in place, but it doesn’t.

“Wow, amazing,” replies Bendy. “You totally didn’t just say that.”

 

It’s some time later that you notice the Joxter dawdle in from the forest, looking uncertain. His eyes drift to the demon curled up on your chest. You suppose he’s wondering if Bendy is still in the mood for murdering, but you aren’t actually sure of that yourself. His fingers have been trailing up and down your throat for the past several minutes, and you've spent all that time envisioning him ripping into your neck so vividly that you can feel the stinging pain and wet slickness, and the blood spilling from your arteries, which in reality, are somehow still whole and in tact.

You think you’re going crazy. But you’re not sure. Either way, it’s probably a very helpless look that you end up transmitting to the Joxter.

He brushes off his coat listlessly. Tugs at his gloves. Blows out of his lips. Finally, quietly, “hullo, darling.” You have difficulty placing the sound within any specific location: you see the Joxter’s lips move, but the sound could have been coming from anywhere.

Bendy jerks his head up, and his fingers at last leave your throat. “Hey, you’re back! I was wondering where ya went.”

“Just for a walk. How are you feeling?”

“Oh, I feel great.” Bendy stretches and repositions himself on your lap. Every time he moves you expect him to kill you, and you smile when you realize this time, again, he’s not.

“That’s good,” the Joxter replies cautiously.

“I am sorry for getting so sore at’cha,” Bendy adds, with a touch of humility. “I didn’t mean to upset ya or nothin’, he just looked an awful lot like a Snufkin-“

“Oh, no bother,” the Joxter interjects. “You see, as I was taking my walk, I decided that he wasn’t a Joxter after all.”

“Huh?”

You, too, are baffled, because there’s no doubt at all that the individual Bendy murdered was a Joxter.

“Indeed.” The Joxter fluffs his overcoat and hums. “He was a Snufkin. I was wrong, and you were right.”

“Well, that was a big argument over nothin’,” Bendy grumbles. “If you had just believed me in the first place, we wouldn’t have had a problem.”

“It was very wrong of me. I know you wouldn’t ever kill a Joxter.”

“Oh, _oh_. No, nope, wouldn’t do that.”

“You only kill Snufkins, after all.”

“Yep! Only Snufkins.”

Ah. A game of pretend, then. Another game that the both of them are playing. You'll be playing it, too, you're sure.

The Joxter looks satisfied. Fear gone, he wanders up to the canoe. Bendy eagerly scoots closer and purrs when the Joxter scratches between his horns. “Speaking of,” the Joxter continues, “perhaps you should kill Happy?”

You freeze. Bendy looks surprised. “I thought ya wanted to keep him?”

“Not at the cost of your own comfort, darling. You’re welcome to kill him now, or whenever you feel inclined. You brought him here in the first place, and you remember to feed him more than I – it’s only fair you should be in charge of whether he lives or dies.”

You hold your breath while Bendy glances at you. “Okay,” he says.

Oh. You miss the rest of conversation through hyperventilation. When you finally tune back in, you catch the end of Bendy saying something:

“-an accident, I pinky promise. And he’ll still be totally fun this way.”

“Ah, well. Mistakes do happen.”

“Especially with Snufkins,” Bendy complains. “How was I supposed to know a teensy tiny bit of pressure can ruin their hearing?”

“Exactly. No way to learn except through practice. Then, are we ready to go?” The Joxter looks at you expectantly.

“G-go?”

“Congrats, Happy,” Bendy declares, “I’m not killin’ ya! We’re gonna twenty-three skidoo outta here instead.”

“Wh-what?”

“If you had been paying any attention, dear, you'd know that we are moving somewhere new.”

The dots are really slow to connect in your head, and once they do, you echo, “moving?”

The Joxter shakes his head. “Try to pay attention, Happy. This is no place for a Joxter or a Snufkin anymore. We need to find a new home until the blood soaks away with rains. Here, I’ll gather the harmonicas and Bendy can help you get up-”

The Joxter lets Bendy spill back to the ground, and then he’s gone into the woods, presumably taking a longer but less bloody route to the other side of the clearing.

“You heard him,” Bendy says, banging on the side of the canoe. “Up and at em.”

You don’t need to be asked a second time. You’re already scrambling out of the canoe before your dizziness catches up with you, and you end up on the dirt.

Bendy trots up. “You’re really having trouble with the whole balance thing, aren’t ya?” Your eyes turn to look at him without moving your head because that seems to exacerbate the problem.

“Here, let me help.” He grabs your hair and slams your face into the dirt.

“It’s nice you can still laugh at yourself,” Bendy says, as you drowsily sit up and blink away the spots in your eyes. He begins to circle around you. “You know, most Snufkins at this-“ he passes by your bad ear and although you get he’s still talking, you understand none of it until he loops back around, “in terror, but you, you laugh. You’re a really special Snufkin, aren’t you?”

Getting up doesn’t seem like a good idea. You wrap your arms around your midsection, and rock gently. He doesn’t seem to want to kill you, but you never know. And there’s an awful lot he can do without actually killing you. You’re imagining many of those things now. You wonder if it would help to offer. At least the suspense would be gone, then.

“Hey, answer me.” He kicks your ribs.

“Yes,” you say.

“Yes what.”

“Yes, I’m a special Snufkin.”

Bendy chokes. “Jeez Happy, self-centered much? You don’t have to be so arrogant.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You should be.” He flicks between your eyes. Yet again, his next words are muffled and placeless. “Isn’t that right?” he finishes, whispering in your good ear.

“Wh-what?”

“And now you’re not even pretending to listen!” Bendy throws up his hands. “The Joxter’s right; you’re useless.”

“He fell?” comes the Joxter’s voice.

“He can’t stand. Ohh, wait, gimme the harmonicas-“

There’s an exchange, then Bendy returns. You finally find out what happened to your harmonica: it’s knotted onto the fishing line, right amongst all the others. You’re the only one alive who owns a harmonica on that line.

“He just doesn’t stop giggling, does he?” the Joxter sighs.

“Aw, I think it’s endearing.” Bendy knots the line of harmonicas around your neck. "A gift for you, Happy. Look." He takes your hand in his, and places it over one of the harmonicas. "Now you can feel close to all the other Snufkins that died before you."

"What a sweet gift," the Joxter purrs. "Aren't you going to say thank you, Happy?"

"Th-thank you." Your fingers clench around the harmonica, "thank you, Bendy."

He grins, adjusting his bowtie. "Gee, you're welcome. Ready to go, Jox?"

 

It’s only then you grasp the idea that you’ll be leaving the clearing. You look out, back to the tree that they had tied you to seemingly forever ago, and you glimpse the patch where you had buried the knife. The dirt is soaked in blood now. The knife must be still there, buried beneath blood and soil, and it’s there it will be staying. How stupidly futile stealing it had been. How meaningless in the end.

The Joxter complains, gesturing, “You don’t even know what he’s laughing at half the time.”

“He’s laughing at his own breaking brain.”

The Joxter shakes his head. “There’s just no accounting for the insanity of Snufkins.” After this, he slings one pack onto his own back, and another he drops beside you. “We’re going, dear, so I suggest you find some way to walk.”

Bendy kicks your side. “Hey Happy, get up.”

You don’t respond. You can’t walk. You’re a Snufkin that’s partially deaf, a Snufkin beat to hell, and now a Snufkin that can’t even walk. On your own, you wouldn’t be able to forage for food or water. You wouldn’t be able to hear Joxters coming. Your vulnerabilities are crippling.

Bendy’s kicks get harder, bruising. You’re a sack of flour for as much as you respond.

“We won’t get anywhere like this,” the Joxter grumbles.

“Just carry him.”

“Look at him, dear, I’d be exhausted within minutes. Can’t you carry him in your other form?”

“Walking on three legs like that is haaard.”

The Joxter pauses, hums. “Well, can he ride you? Like a horse?”

Bendy chokes. “Hahaha, what?”

“Do you know what a horse is?”

“Yeah, I know what a horse is!” Bendy cackles, clutching his chest. “You want him to – to _ride_ me?”

“That could have several meanings, but yes. It simply seems the most practical.”

Bendy doubles over laughing.

“Is that a no?” the Joxter asks.

“Oh, that’s a yes, heheh- hold on – you gotta do it right- _neigh_ , _whinny_!“ Trying to stifle giggles, Bendy trots around you, lifting his knees up high and making a very unconvincing “clip clop clip clop.”

“Bendy,” the Joxter says, pained.

Bendy’s now on your deaf side, so you don’t make out the words he says, but you catch the whiny tone, and then abruptly it’s something much larger and drippier looming beside you.

You didn’t actually comprehend most of their conversation, not for an inability to hear but for an inability to think beyond a murky, fearful fog. It’s only now that the fear sharpens, your brain frantically rewinds, and you say, “I-I don’t want to ride him-“

“Nobody asked you,” the Joxter tuts. “Bendy, can you get lower?”

Bendy sticks out his large black tongue petulantly, but obediently folds his long legs beneath him to a position that’s almost laying down. His grin widens as his chin rests on the ground. His long tail swishes.

“Uh.” You want very much to run away, and you probably would have, if you were capable of it. _No_ , you mentally revise. You wouldn’t run. Running doesn’t work. He's much faster than you are. And then it would be your own fault when he hurts you, because you invited it by disobeying.

The Joxter’s brow furrows as he misreads your hesitation. “Ah, right. Bendy, those spikes would probably impale poor Happy. Could you…?”

The spikes melt back down into his spine, which in itself remains just as bony as ever.

“There, much better.” The Joxter smiles at you, and places a hand on your back. “Go on, love.”

Listening to them is for the best. But for some reason your body isn’t doing anything. You wish it would. But it's suddenly not attached to your mind.

“Oh, just move,” the Joxter mutters, and shoves you hard enough to unseat you.

The world tilts; you throw out your hands to catch yourself, and land against the sharp edges of Bendy’s ribs. Ink comes away with your fingertips.

“N-no, please-“

The Joxter scruffs the back of your shirt with one hand, with the other he grabs your leg. “This – need not be so difficult -“ For your part, you've become a limp noodle, drooping out of his grip.

Finally, he harrumphs and releases you. “The most stubborn Snufkin, I swear. Bendy, please?”

Bendy makes a wet noise something like laughter. A second pair of arms bursts from his sides; bony hands with far too many fingers coil around your thighs while his original pair of arms morbidly bends the wrong direction to sweep you off the ground. In a matter of seconds you’re straddling his back, his arms have returned to normal, and there are thick rings of ink like extra ribs securing each of your legs in place.

He doesn’t wait before heaving up onto all fours, your head spins as the ground is suddenly much much further away, and the natural downward curve of his spine makes you feel perpetually on the verge of falling forward.

There’s nothing to hold onto. His spine digs hard between your legs. You’re panicking, just a little, but it’s okay. You’re also making a pointless heaving noise. It’s not doing any good. When you look down at your hands, splayed on either side of his spine, you find you’re shaking. Pretty badly, actually. Wow.

“You’re really not all there, are you?” The Joxter says from the ground.

You giggle. The inky coils around your legs begin to slither higher on your thighs. You jump, look down, and see that the coils haven’t actually moved at all. Just imagining things.

“If he giggles the whole time, you’re welcome to gag him,” the Joxter says placidly, then sniffs the air thoughtfully. “This way, darling.”

 

 

The Joxter takes care to make up for the fact Bendy can’t speak by sharing stories about previous Snufkins they’ve murdered. The vivid detail he supplies sometimes focuses on physical attributes of the Snufkins, such as specific hair colors, outfits, or physical quirks, and sometimes focuses on the grisly details of their bodies being ripped apart and mutilated. He seems to have an equal fascination for both.

Sometimes you can catch what he’s saying, sometimes not, but it all feels like bits of some morbid puzzle where your mind far too easily fills in the blanks. Several times during the trip you jump (and once scream) because you're positive that the ink is scrawling higher on your body, ready to burrow into your skin and settle in your rib cage. Ready to nest inside you.

But every time you look, the rings around your legs haven’t moved.

 _That’s yet another time_ , your brain chirps. _Another time you’ve imagined something that’s not really there._

You know about insanity.

Once, when you were younger, and your father was playing one of his hunting games (you understand what those were about, now), you wandered quite far and came across a crumbling pink house in the forest. An elderly lady with an angular snout and a tattered red dress was sitting on the porch (the Joxter later explained it must have been a fillyjonk), but her eyes were staring at nothing. She was dragging a brush over some orange-grey animal in her lap but the motions were stilted, repetitive, robotic.

You were about to dart in the forest again when she barked out, “Boy!” and you jumped, frightened. Her foggy eyes looked at you without seeing you at all. “Boy, what did I tell you? Come here!” her voice was shrill. It scared you, because your father never raised his voice like that, and because of another nameless reason you could not define. You crept closer.

She smelled of death. One bony hand clasped your wrist. Her eyes fixed on a point above your right shoulder. “You think you don’t have to do your chores, is that it, well- because of your negligence, I had to brush the cat, and that means the plants didn’t get watered-“

She pointed to a plot of earth that must have once been a garden, but now was a ruin of shriveled, dead plants.

When you looked back, you saw the animal in her lap was also dead, and one patch of its body was brushed so thoroughly that the fur was all gone, and so too was much of the skin. “I had to brush the cat,” she said. “And now the plants went without water, and the sink isn’t cleaned-“ She released you, set aside the brush and then the stiff cat, and disappeared into the house.

You ran.

Your father explained later, about wires crossing in people’s brains, about things going wrong in the head.

Now you think something has very much gone wrong in your head.

Twice you imagine the spikes along his spine snapping up and slicing you open. As time passes, you don’t have to imagine what the pain would feel like, because his spine is digging into your crotch (which had never really stopped hurting in the first place). Countless times you imagine coils of ink winding around you. And at some point, when the Joxter is wandering on the side of your bad ear and you can't make out any words, you spend many many minutes wondering what it'd feel like to have your ribs cracked up and to have Bendy curl up inside. You wonder what it'd be like to die.

Finally, on the Joxter’s command, you all stop for dinner, which is an array of bland roots and mushrooms that the Joxter scrounges up. Bendy asks you if you got wet while riding him, and you scratch your stitches quietly.

Not long after, you’re dragged onto his back and on the move again.

Little fireflies are flitting about in the deep blue haze of twilight before the three of you stumble upon an aged stone well with moss and flowers sprouting in its crumbling walls. It’s here the Joxter chooses to rest for the night.

You’re sore between your legs, but you’re very used to that now. And you don’t try to fight the Joxter off when he curls around you. This is simply how things are. You cry, silently, and sleep.

 

 


	12. Ending

You’re playing a game.

The Joxter’s reclined against the well, eating a plump apple and watching with the foulest sort of gratification. Bendy is playing with you.

“Simon says _walk_ , Happy, just walk, real simple, right?”

It’s not simple, not really. It should be. And you try to listen. You totter, one step after another, whole-heartedly focused on not tipping over. Your ankle sears with every step.

“Goodness, he can’t even follow the simplest orders,” the Joxter remarks.

“He looks _hilarious_.”

“He’s trying, at least. Do give him some credit.”

“Look at him: he’d fall over if I touched him with a feather.”

The Joxter chortles. “I must say, intentional or not, removing the hearing in that ear seems to have done him a great deal of good.”

“Oh, yeah, totally. Hey Happy, Simon says stop.”

You halt, swaying, and your brain seems to think you’re still walking because it takes a moment for the world to stop moving. You think you’re getting better at this, though.

“Simon says touch your toes.”

“Is there some sort of objective to this, or are you just making it up as you go along?” the Joxter asks.

“Oh, I have no idea what I’m doing. Whatever seems funny at the moment," answers Bendy.

You bend double, reach for your toes. The world summersaults, and then a moment later so do you. The harmonicas clack against your chest. You end up on your butt, but at least then you can reach your toes, which you promptly touch.

“He meant to do that,” the Joxter says drily, while Bendy laughs.

“Man, he keeps sneaking around getting in trouble by just barely managing to do the command.”

“His determination is truly precious.”

“Simon says lick one of the harmonicas,” Bendy orders next.

You take one in your hand, and gaze down at the bronze metal. You’re smiling. It tastes like blood. It’s drenched in blood. _You’re_ drenched in blood. Soaked in it. Drowning in the fetid, all consuming stench – oh. Wait, no. It doesn’t have any blood on it and neither do you, at least not right now. Your shirt is more black than green at this point, but that’s about it. The blood taste must be the metal. You lick it again, and yes, it’s just the metal.

Bendy wanders closer. “Do you want to know how that Snufkin died, Happy?”

You shake your head. And then nod. And then shake your head.

Bendy’s expression falters. “Oh, wait. I don’t actually remember which Snufkin owned that one. That harmonica looks a lot like two others on the line, uhh…”

“No need to let it interrupt the game,” the Joxter inputs. “What will you have him do next?”

“Oh, right. Hm, Simon says take off your shirt.”

Off it goes. It’s funny how much more vulnerable that feels.

“Good,” Bendy coos, “now pet your belly. Over your stitches.”

Your fingers are already skimming the black lines before Bendy’s grin turns wicked. “HAH! I didn’t say Simon says!”

“It didn’t take him long to mess up at all, did it? What will you do to him?”

“I didn’t actually think about that.” Bendy puts his hands on his hips and swishes his tail. “Hey, Happy, what should I do to you?”

“I’m sorry,” you start, and then can’t stop, “I-I’m sorry, I didn’t mean – I-I was just trying to listen, I-“

“Well, ya didn’t listen careful enough, did ya? I hope you’re not blaming that on your cruddy ear.”

“N-no, no, I wouldn’t- it was my own fault-“

“Tell ya what, you screwed up early, so I’ll give you one free pass, but you have to keep play-“ but he’s circling around you, and he passes onto the side you can’t hear. You quickly twist around and catch- “on your hands and knees.”

Did he say Simon says before it? You’re scared to ask. They’ll think you weren’t listening. You take a chance, and reposition yourself onto your hands and knees with shaking limbs.

“You’re having far too much fun with this,” the Joxter comments merrily.

Bendy shoots him a shit-eating grin. “No such thing. Touch your nose to the ground.”

You don’t move. You hear Bendy chuckle. “Ooh, sharp. You’re getting better. Simon says touch your nose to the ground.”

The soil is rich. Sweet smelling.

“Simon says look up.”

You crane your head up. There a white-gloved hand offered in front of your face. “Simon says lick.”

The chemical smell burns your nostrils. Your pink tongue juts from your mouth and presses to his palm. It’s very much like dipping your tongue into a well of ink, and you have to spend a moment fighting down the impulse to gag. You can do this. You get yourself under control, and begin to lick. And you lick, again and again and again. All over his palm and the length of his thumb and between his fingers. You know you probably look like a stupid, beaten dog. But you'd rather look like that then be told you're not doing a good enough job, because who knows what will happen then.

“Suck,” he demands next, in a tone that means nothing good. You close your lips around two of his fingers, and draw them deeper into your mouth.

The searing line of pain that lashes across your back takes you completely by surprise. You jerk away, gasping, eyes round, to find the sharp tip of his tail dripping red.

“I didn’t say Simon says,” he smiles.

Oh, you messed up. You really messed up. You should have known better. His tail lashes across your cheek next. Right over the wounds from yesterday. When you cry out and hunch over, the spade tip catches you along your ribs. Then again on your forearm when you try to lift it to protect yourself, and that one digs deep.

You should have known better. Now you've put yourself in a very very bad situation. You’re bleeding quite a lot, and gasping, and giggling.

“Bendy, isn’t that quite enough?” the Joxter interjects.

No, you think. It’s not enough; it’s not going to end there.

His tail winds around your throat. He grabs your bleeding forearm.

“Simon says hold still.”

You obey. He _bites_.

 

You’re riding on his back again. The Joxter is winding ahead, guiding. Your forearm is bandaged, and so’s your ribs – when you focus real hard, you can sort of remember the Joxter doing that. You can also remember Bendy licking and biting frenetically at your forearm, like some sort of deranged animal. It reminds you of how he got with the dead Joxter – oh wait, you’re all agreeing it was a Snufkin – the way he was riled up about the blood. Except there’s only one small bandage on your arm, and you’re pretty sure he was biting much more than that. You’re also pretty sure he strangled you, but your throat doesn’t hurt at all for some reason. Maybe it was your eye he maimed? No, wait, that doesn’t hurt, either. You touch the closed lid just in case, but no pain.

How bizarre.

You try to push down the ink that's winding up your legs again. The Joxter glances back - perhaps you were making some whimpering noises - and with a sly smile asks, 

"Dear, what are you trying to do?"

 

 

 

The three of you nest close together in a thicket that evening. The Joxter gives you lots of water, and more food than he himself eats. To Bendy he says, “you’ll accidentally kill him at this rate, darling.”

Bendy has his arms crossed. “I didn’t mean to.”

“He’s fragile. If you want to kill him, that’s well and good but if you’d like to keep him alive, you need to leave him alone for a bit. And that means days. Not hours. We talked about this.”

Bendy huffs. “That’s such a long time.”

The Joxter gazes at you, his eyes unnaturally pale against the deepening dusk. “You ought to stop provoking him, Happy,” he says, gently, kindly, “I can’t very well help you if you’re so determined to get hurt.”

You should know better.

The Joxter caresses your hair. “You need a new flower crown, love. Let’s make one together tomorrow, shall we?”

 

 

You wake up a lot in the middle of the night. Snap awake, heart pounding, afraid for no apparent reason. Sometimes it’s because there are huge claws gouging into your chest but then they’re not actually there. Sometimes you wake up in pieces, like that Snufkin Bendy nested in. But you pop back together once you realize you probably wouldn’t still be alive if you were missing most of your body.

The next morning, you jerk awake just the same, and have to sternly remind your silly brain that you aren’t in pieces yet. There’s movement: the Joxter is already awake, hunched over next to you, close enough to touch. He’s rocking softly and panting, propped up on his arms. Bendy, you find, is underneath him, his legs hiked on either side of the Joxter’s hips. Despite your recent experiences, and the proximity making it very obvious, it takes a second for you to comprehend what’s going on. Once you do, a short laugh bursts from your throat.

“Oh, shaddup,” Bendy says, at the same time the Joxter grumbles, “must you interrupt, Happy?”

You scoot away until you hit a bush, and then you wring your fingers (pain – right, one of them is broken). You don’t really know where to look so you stare at the ground. It all sounds disgusting and wet. The Joxter’s breath huffs. Bendy murmurs something low and purring, and you’re glad for once you can’t make out the words.

It’s not long before they finish. While the Joxter slumps against a nearby tree, Bendy sits up, stretches, and looks your way. “Having fun watchin’, huh?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Jealous?”

“ _No_.”

“What, ya don’t like the Joxter? _Rude_.”

The Joxter snorts and places his pipe between his teeth. “Happy knows he wants it. Just give him time to admit it to himself.” He lights the pipe and puffs a few smoke rings.

“Why wait?” Bendy wanders closer. Instinctively, you start cringing away, and giggles start afresh. His hands cup your chin and tilt your head up. “You want it, don’t you, Happy?” His fingers tighten on your chin. “Say you want the Joxter.”

“I-I don’t-“

“Yes, you do.”

“I do.” You have to keep him in a good mood. You can't upset him. If you upset him, it's entirely your own fault when he inevitably hurts you.

“That doesn’t sound convincing, Happy,” he sings, and there's a dangerous edge to his tone. 

“I want the Joxter,” you gasp. 

“More.”

“I-I want the Joxter so much. I want him to – to r-rape me.”

“Papa,” the Joxter suddenly says, his wild eyes fixed on you. “Call me papa.”

Bendy tilts his head to the side, smiles at you. “Well, Happy?”

You wheeze. Breathing is getting hard again. That seems to happen a lot. “Papa. I want –“ you falter. “I want my papa-“ The Joxter makes a noise that turns your stomach. “I want my papa so much, I want him inside me, I want-“ you hiccup. Tears are streaming down your face, but you can’t stop smiling. “I want him, I want my papa, I want – I want- please- please don’t hurt me, I want him-“

Bendy whistles. “Really knocked the cork outta his piehole.”

“Kind of repetitive, isn’t he?” the Joxter says gleefully.

“Well, there you go.” Bendy pats your head and you flinch with each pat. “One perfectly fuckable Happy. He even asks for it now. You’re welcome.”

 

 

The Joxter makes you a flower crown, this one with an array of different flowers and colors. He kisses you a whole bunch then, and paws all over you in admiration. “So lovely,” he tells you. “Any Joxter would be jealous of me, to have a Snufkin such as you.”

As if you’re a trophy or a possession. Because you _are_ a trophy and a possession. You’re a Snufkin, after all.

Most of the rest of the day, you spend traveling again. Several days, actually. The Joxter seems to know where to go, and you don’t ever think to ask, for some reason. Over this time period, Bendy attacks you several times, sometimes bad enough that you should probably be dead. But then you blink and there aren’t any new injuries, and sometimes he’s not even anywhere close to you. So that’s all right. He may not have attacked you at all. The Joxter also doesn’t wait long before making screwing you a routine, but you’re pretty sure that does actually happen, because you’re almost always sore.

Whether they’re hurting you or not, they talk a lot. Reminding you of things, like what you’re here for, and how to obey, and why Snufkins exist.

Meanwhile, your ankle heals, enough that you can walk on it with no pain as long as you’re careful about it.

“But you’re welcome to ride me anytime,” Bendy tells you crudely.

The Joxter removes the stitches in your belly, and you find the raised white lines marching all over your skin most fascinating. They look like barbed wire. In some places, where you scratched, they aren’t quite healed yet. The dizziness, too, abates over time. If you turn your head too fast or sit up fast, you still have to pause and let the vertigo settle, but for the most part, you think you’re back to normal. Except for the part where you can’t hear on one side, and all noises are rather placeless now.

“You don’t need to hear right anyway, dear,” the Joxter assures you. “We’ll take care of you. We’ll always take care of you.”

And that’s very true. Bendy gets you food and water, and hand feeds you everything. The Joxter likes to comb through your hair and pick out sticks and stray leaves, and he’s always there wrapped around you at night to keep you from doing something silly like running away. Not that you would. You don’t actually sleep the whole night through ever anymore, because you wake up a whole lot, but you manage just fine. And it’s nice the Joxter’s always there to remind you you _should_ be sleeping.

One evening, you whisper to the Joxter's overcoat, “when is he going to kill me?” 

The response is slow in coming, so much so that you think the Joxter may be asleep after all. Then, with a chuckle in his words, “I don’t think he is, dear. Not on purpose. He’s gotten quite fond of you.”

“Oh.”

The Joxter’s lips touch your hair. “I’ve gotten quite fond of you too, Happy. You’re the son I never truly got to enjoy.”

“Yes, papa.”

 

Several more days pass. The path is almost always headed up now, into the mountains. The trees become sparser, and the ground rockier.

“Perhaps we should simply set up a new nest far from Moominvalley,” the Joxter grumbles one chilly evening, as you’re all flocked around a campfire. “If we must travel this far to just find one Snufkin…”

That catches your attention.

“Aw, but all our packs, and the canoe,” Bendy whines.

The Joxter puffs on his pipe. “Snufkins travel quite a lot. If we stay elsewhere for a year, it should be plenty of time for them to begin moving through that area again.”

“To find one Snufkin….?” You echo.

The Joxter peers at you from under the brim of his hat. “Well, yes,” he says. “didn’t you know we were hunting?”

 

 

They find what they’re hunting the next day. The Joxter first sniffs it out, hidden deep in a rocky burrow, and Bendy drags it screaming from safety. It’s thin, and tough, like a wind-stripped tree clinging to the rocky mountainside, and its clothes are a tattered and faded brown.

Bendy dances around it laughing while the Joxter hits it until it stops fighting. Someone else is laughing and you realize it’s you.

The Joxter falls upon it like a tarantula over prey. You know how much that hurts, having him needily and impatiently forcing himself in. But it isn’t you this time. It isn’t you and how _nice_ that is! Something hurts, deep in your skull and deep in your chest. Shock intermittently flares up harsh and bright with things like  _that's a Snufkin!_ and  _a person, one of your own kind, he's hurting! he's hurting him HELP HIM - DO SOMETHING_ but all you do is bend double and let out big whooping laughs. You can't look away. Its little legs are kicking. You bet you looked just like that. Just like it.  _HIM IT'S A HIM HELP HIM_

Oh wow, your cheeks are wet. You must be crying, that's silly. Laughing and crying at the same time.  _HE'S GOING TO DIE_ death is sometimes better. It's fine. You're fine. Everything is fine. 

Bendy leaps over to you. His white gloved hands grasp yours, and then he pulls you into a wild, hysterical cavorting. The both of you are giggling manically.

“I’m gonna eat a Snufkin,” he sings over the thing’s screaming, "aren'tcha happy about that, huh? Aren'tcha happy?" 

And you smile like your life depends upon it. Your head nods up and down, up and down. You are finally, finally happy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the end of Happy as a series, however, this is not the last time Happy as a character will show up. I have at least one one-shot planned that will take place about a year after the end of this story, when Happy is fully integrated as part of the team, so to speak.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Mama Foxter](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14950622) by [Sp00py](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sp00py/pseuds/Sp00py)




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